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VIETNAMESE BOAT PEOPLE: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND BRIEF
1.
Since 1975, nearly 170,000 Vietnamese boat people have arrived in Hong Kong, 34,000 of them during 1989. Not since 1979 has the
problem been so acute. In that year, a Geneva Conference agreed that all boat people leaving Vietnam would automatically be given refugee status; a second Geneva Conference in June 1989 agreed a Comprehensive Plan of Action, which ended the era of automatic resettlement, extended screening, which had been introduced in Hong Kong in June 1988, to the whole region, and set out the arrangements for those screened in and those screened out. The year was dominated in Hong Kong by the continuing influx of new arrivals throughout the summer, and on the international stage by disagreement over the implementation of a crucial element in the Comprehensive Plan, namely the repatriation of the screened out.
2. The need to review the outcome of the 1979 Geneva Conference
became apparent in the early 1980s, when the majority of those leaving Vietnam had already become economic migrants mostly farmers and fishermen from the North - rather than people fleeing
persecution. The situation became serious in the mid-1980s, when
new arrivals began to exceed the rate of resettlement; it was major new influxes in 1987 and 1988 which precipitated the introduction of screening. These developments led to calls for an International
Conference to agree on a comprehensive and durable solution to a disruptive problem for the region for over ten years.
3. The Comprehensive Plan of Action was drafted at a series of international meetings in early 1989 and finally agreed in March 1989 at a full scale Preparatory Conference in Kuala Lumpur. A Coordinating Committee met shortly before the Geneva Conference itself to finalise the supporting documentation which included
guidelines for implementing the CPA. The CPA and the work of the Coordinating Committee were adopted by acclamation at the 1989 Geneva Conference. The provisions for resettling refugees included sufficient pledges by participating countries to clear over three years all those who arrived in places of first asylum before screening (ie pre-cut-off date camp population) or who were
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