Preventive Action for Refugee Producing Situations

218 Chapters
rights and to make concrete recommendations for ameliorating such situations."
538 Even Grahl-Madsen, the eminent scholar on refugee law,
advocates that for purely humanitarian and practical reasons "the very best
thing would be not to become - not to have to become, that is - a refugee in
the first place." 539 In two regions in particular - Southeast Asia and Central
America - states hard hit by an enormous influx of refugees have publicly
warned of the threat to their security.
A meeting in May 1988 attended by representatives from seven
Southeast Asian countries - Malaysia, Thalland, Brunei, Indonesia, Hong
Kong, the Philippines, and Singapore - reached this anxious conclusion
about the unabated flow of Vietnamese refugees:
If this exodus continues unabated, it will create unacceptable political, security,
economic and social problems for the countries of first refuge. 540
ASEAN members had been reacting to the exodus from Vietnam with such
aggressive measures as pushing off arriving boats to the high seas. They
stressed that the eradication of the conditions leading to the continuing
exodus would contribute to creating a congenial climate for stability,
harmony, and good neighborliness in the region. 541
Honduras, which has been hosting a large proportion of Central American
refugees and displaced persons, has also complained about the resulting
security problems within the country and the growing tensions with
its neighbors. The border situation between El Salvador and Honduras, as
between Nicaragua and Honduras, is tense. Regular and "irregular forces"
(the term used in the Contadora peace process for the armed in-
________________________
538 Ramcharan, Humanitarian Good Offices in International Law, 1983, p. 2.
539 Atle Grahl-Madsen, "The emergent International Law relating to Refugees:
Past-Present-Future," The Refugee Problem on the Universal, Regional and
National Level, Institute of International Public Law and International
Relations of Thessaloniki, 1987, p. 239.
540 See "Seminar on First Asylum for Vietnamese Boatpeople, Cha-Am,
Thailand 25-28,1988," in Refugee Reports, U.S. Committee for Refugees,
Vol. IX, Number 6, June 24,1988, p. 9.
541 In order to find a solution to the problems felt by the first-asylum countries,
including threats to their national security, the ASEAN foreign ministers
proposed to hold another United Nations-sponsored international conference
to "discuss halting the exodus of Indochinese refugees." See "Schultz Begins
18-Day Visit to 7 Asian Lands and Hong Kong," The New York Times, 7 June
1988. and "Proposition de conference de 1'ONU sur les boat people," La
Gazette de Lausanne, 5 July 1988.
Legal Justification 219
surgency) alike are employing aggressive tactics in the area. Insurgency and
counterinsurgency activities strain relations between governments, demanding
the highest level of political mediation. The Secretary-General, under his
mandate to maintain peace and security, translated his support for the peace
process into concrete action, in the form of a special plan of economic
cooperation for Central America: "The Situation in /Central America: Threats
to International Peace and Security and Peace Initiatives." Drawn up as [partly
on the impetus of] the 1987 peace agreement among Central American states,
this plan of cooperation is the first general political Central American
agreement to include provisions for the treatment and repatriation of refugees
and the handling of displaced persons:
[there is an increasing] complexity and seriousness of the situation of the refugees
and displaced persons in the Central American region, and its effects on the social
and economic development of the area. 542
Stressing the link between refugee movements and regional stability, the
country's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York,
Ambassador Hernandez Alcerro, recently expressed a cautious hope for the future
in the UN Security Council commenting on the Central Ameri- can Peace Plan:
Once the hostilities are over, the tensions among neighboring countries
produced by such refugee movements will come to an end. 543
During the debate about the the Secretary-General's special program of
economic assistance to Central America, the Czechoslovakian representative
spoke on behalf of all the Socialist countries, expressing the hope that the
special program for Central America would help to achieve the basic goal
"shared by all of us: peace, security and development." 544 In addition, Peru,
which in had sponsored the establishment of the Support Group for the peace
process in Lima in 1985, reiterated its confidence in the Secretary-General in
further strengthening peace and development in Central America. Peru
cautioned, however, that the process must take into account
_______________________
542 UN Doc A/42/L.49,10 May 1988.
543 A/42/PV.24, p. 21, cited in S/PV.2803,22 March 1988.
544 A/42/PV.111,13 May 1988, p. 61.