ENG-1959 — Page 14

Chapter 1: Review

HONG KONG AND WORLD REFUGEE YEAR

THE end of the year covered by this Annual Report coincides with the half-way point of World Refugee Year: and since no review of the year's events in Hong Kong can avoid repeated reference to the social problems which arise from her recent vast increase in population, it is appropriate also at this time to look back on the pattern of the World Refugee Year Movement as it is now shaping in relation to Hong Kong; to relate its aims and achievements to Hong Kong's overall problems; and perhaps to draw some conclu- sions of interest to those who have the success of the movement at heart. For, as readers of these Annual Reports will be aware, the problem of a rapidly increasing population lies at the core of every problem facing the administration. It therefore goes without saying that Hong Kong received with pleasure and gratitude the news of the Resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations calling for a massive international onslaught on the world- wide problem of refugees, and that she immediately recognized this initiative by the United Nations as an important milestone in her own long road towards the achievement of acceptable social standards.

Most readers will be familiar with the essentials of Hong Kong's problems from previous Annual Reports. In particular the chapter entitled 'A Problem of People', which introduces the Report for 1956, and has recently been reprinted as a separate pamphlet, describes the consequences of an influx of some 700,000 refugees -now estimated to have risen to at least 1,000,000-not long after the return of many hundreds of thousands of others to their previous homes in Hong Kong after the end of the Pacific War: homes which had in very many cases been destroyed or fallen into disrepair during the Japanese Occupation. ‘A Problem of People' described the appalling overcrowding and near collapse of the social services which followed upon this wave of new arrivals;