The Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA) is a program adopted in June 1989 at a conference in Geneva held by The Steering Committee of the International Conference on Indo-Chinese Refugees. It was designed to deter and to stop the continuing influx of Indochineseboat people and to cope with an increasing reluctance by third countries to maintain resettlement opportunities for every Vietnamese or Laotian exile, with the threat of countries of first asylum in Southeast Asia to push back asylum seekers.
By changing UNHCR policy toward the Boat people. Those who arrived at the camps after the so-called cut-off dates as follows:
Hong Kong June 16, 1988
Malaysia March 14, 1989
Thailand March 14, 1989
Philippines March 14, 1989
Indonesia March 17, 1989
would no longer automatically be considered as prima facierefugees, but only asylum seekers and would have to be screened to qualify for refugee status (Screening procedure or procedure to determine refugee status). Those who were screened-out would be sent back to Vietnam and Laos, under an orderly and monitored repatriation program.
When the steering committee first met, in 1989, hundreds of thousands of people were escaping out of Viet Nam and Laos by land and boat. Faced with the continuing exodus, and increasing reluctance by third countries to maintain resettlement opportunities for every exile, countries of first asylum in South-East Asia threatened push-backs of the asylum seekers.
The Conference on Indo-Chinese Refugees wanted Viet Nam and the Lao People's Democratic Republic to be involved in the solution for this problem, as well as first-asylum countries, (Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand) and resettlement countries, to share responsibility for the asylum seekers and guarantee asylum to all refugees.
The Conference also demanded that every asylum seeker would receive refuge in first-asylum countries and not be pushed back, when the process of determination of his or her refugee claim was pending. Screening procedures (or procedure to determine refugee status) were adopted to examine every individual's claim to refugee status. Recognized refugees were to receive resettlement opportunities. Rejected asylum seekers were to return to their home countries, whose governments agreed to refrain from any discrimination, harassment, persecution or unfair treatment.
Under the Plan, the UNHCR provided humanitarian assistance to the asylum seekers and countries of first asylum. Extensive monitoring procedures were also established in the countries of origin, and financial assistance was provided to the returnees and to the communities which agreed to accept them back.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with over 17,300 staff working in 135 countries.
A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a person who has lost the protection of his or her country of origin and who cannot or is unwilling to return there due to well-founded fear of persecution. Such a person may be called an asylum seeker until granted refugee status by the contracting state or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) if they formally make a claim for asylum.
An asylum seeker is a person who leaves their country of residence, enters another country and applies for asylum in that other country. An asylum seeker is an immigrant who has been forcibly displaced and might have fled their home country because of war or other factors harming them or their family. If their case is accepted, they become considered a refugee. The terms asylum seeker, refugee and illegal immigrant are often confused.
The Orderly Departure Program(ODP) was a program to permit immigration of Vietnamese to the United States and to other countries. It was created in 1979 under the auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The objective of the ODP was to provide a mechanism for Vietnamese to leave their homeland safely and in an orderly manner to be resettled abroad. Prior to the ODP, tens of thousands of "boat people" were fleeing Vietnam monthly by boat and turning up on the shores of neighboring countries. Under the ODP, from 1980 until 1997, 623,509 Vietnamese were resettled abroad of whom 458,367 went to the United States.
The Pacific Solution is the name given to the Government of Australia's policy of transporting asylum seekers to detention centres on island nations in the Pacific Ocean, rather than allowing them to land on the Australian mainland. Initially implemented from 2001 to 2007, it had bipartisan support from the Coalition and Labor opposition at the time. The Pacific Solution consisted of three central strategies:
Overseas Vietnamese refers to Vietnamese people who live outside Vietnam. There are approximately 5 million overseas Vietnamese, the largest community of whom live in the United States. The oldest wave of overseas Vietnamese left Vietnam as economic and political refugees after the 1975 fall of Saigon and the North Vietnamese annexation of South Vietnam.
Galang is an island of 80 km2 located 25 mi (40 km) southeast of Batam, belonging to a group of three islands called Barelang. Part of the Riau Archipelago, Indonesia, Galang is located just south of Batam and Rempang which themselves are just south of Singapore and Johor. Administratively, all three islands form part of the city of Batam; the nearest other city to Galang is Tanjungpinang on Bintan island, about a 30-minute boat ride away. The island is connected by the Barelang Bridge to Rempang and Batam.
Galang Refugee Camp accommodated Indochinese refugees from 1979 to 1996 on Galang Island in the Riau Islands of Indonesia. It is estimated that around 250,000 refugees passed through Galang during this period.
The situation of human rights in Laos has often been, and remains, a recognized cause for serious concern. Laos is one of a handful of Marxist-Leninist governments and is ruled by a one-party communist government backed by the Lao People's Army in alliance with the Vietnam People's Army and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi.
Many of the Vietnamese people in Hong Kong immigrated as a result of the Vietnam War and persecution since the mid-1970s.
Refugees in Hong Kong have formed historic waves arriving in the city due to wars in the region and Hong Kong's historical role as a trading and transit entrepôt. More recently those seeking asylum or protection based on torture claims are a fast growing part of the city's population, increasing since 2004 due to changes in the legal system for considering asylum and torture claims mandated by local courts.
Laotian Australians, also known as Lao Australians, refers to Australians who have either migrated from Laos and/or have Lao ancestry. The first Lao people that came to live in Australia arrived through the Colombo Plan in the 1960s, which gave a number of Laotians the opportunity to live and study in Australia. The migration of the Lao commenced with the Indochinese refugee crisis in 1975 following communist regime takeovers. According to the 2016 Census, there are 10,402 Laos-born Australians with the majority residing in New South Wales.
Relations between Laos and the United States officially began when the United States opened a legation in Laos in 1950, when Laos was a semi-autonomous state within French Indochina. These relations were maintained after Lao independence in October 1953.
Communism in Vietnam is linked to the Politics of Vietnam and the push for independence. Marxism was introduced in Vietnam with the emergence of three communist parties: the Indochinese Communist Party, the Annamese Communist Party, and the Indochinese Communist Union, later joined by a Trotskyist movement led by Tạ Thu Thâu. In 1930, the Communist International (Comintern) sent Nguyễn Ái Quốc to Hong Kong to coordinate the unification of the parties into the Vietnamese Communist Party, with Trần Phú as its first Secretary General.
Vietnamese boat people, also known simply as boat people, refers to the refugees who fled Vietnam by boat and ship following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. This migration and humanitarian crisis was at its highest in 1978 and 1979, but continued into the early 1990s. The term is also often used generically to refer to the Vietnamese people who left their country in a mass exodus between 1975 and 1995. This article uses the term "boat people" to apply only to those who fled Vietnam by sea.
Refugees of the Syrian Civil War are citizens and permanent residents of Syria who have fled the country throughout the Syrian Civil War. The pre-war population of the Syrian Arab Republic was estimated at 22 million (2017), including permanent residents. Of that number, the United Nations (UN) identified 13.5 million (2016) as displaced persons, requiring humanitarian assistance. Of these, since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011 more than six million (2016) were internally displaced, and around five million (2016) had crossed into other countries, seeking asylum or placed in Syrian refugee camps worldwide. It is often described as one of the largest refugee crises in history.
The Indochina refugee crisis was the large outflow of people from the former French colonies of Indochina, comprising the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, after communist governments were established in 1975. Over the next 25 years and out of a total Indochinese population in 1975 of 56 million, more than 3 million people would undertake the dangerous journey to become refugees in other countries of Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, or China. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 250,000 Vietnamese refugees had perished at sea by July 1986. More than 2.5 million Indochinese were resettled, mostly in North America, Australia, and Europe. More than 525,000 were repatriated, either voluntarily or involuntarily, mainly from Cambodia.
Asylum in Australia has been granted to many refugees since 1945, when half a million Europeans displaced by World War II were given asylum. Since then, there have been periodic waves of asylum seekers from South East Asia and the Middle East, with government policy and public opinion changing over the years.
A refugee crisis can refer to difficulties and dangerous situations in the reception of large groups of forcibly displaced persons. These could be either internally displaced, refugees, asylum seekers or any other huge groups of migrants.
Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, officially the Ban Vinai Holding Center, was a refugee camp in Thailand from 1975 until 1992. Ban Vinai primarily housed highland people, especially Hmong, who fled communist rule in Laos. Ban Vinai had a maximum population of about 45,000 Hmong and other highland people. Many of the highland Lao were resettled in the United States and other countries. Many others lived in the camp for years which came to resemble a crowded and large Hmong village. The Royal Thai Government closed the camp in 1992, forced some of the inhabitants to return to Laos and removed the rest of them to other refugee camps.
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