Preventive Action for Refugee Producing Situations

78 Chapter 3
3.1.2.1. The OOP (Orderly Departure Program), the 1979 and the 1989
Meeting and the CPA
Introduction
The major cause of the exodus from Vietnam was the fall of Saigon in
April 1975, which, following a strong, two- decade-long American involvement,
resulted in the restructuring of the economic and political
system in South Vietnam.
This analysis cannot provide a complete account of the causes that
motivated nearly one and a half million persons 150 to leave their homeland,
often under life-threatening circumstances en route to asylum. It focuses
rather on those factors that have perpetuated the outflow of refugees
over the past thirteen years, even though they could to some extent have
been addressed. I will also examine the long-term impact of the Orderly
Departure Program (ODP) and the 1979 Geneva Meeting on Refugees
and Displaced Persons in Southeast Asia, on July 20 and 21, and explore
the question of whether new policies and actions would be more effective
in view of the developments of the past decade.
Background
The Orderly Departure program was originally intended by UNHCR only
to facilitate family reunification. Following strenuous negotiations with
the Vietnamese authorities, UNHCR agreed to expand the program to
include "other humanitarian cases." 151 Although the ODP was not
intended to remedy the causes of the exodus from Vietnam, and has not
done so, UNHCR stepped beyond its usual functions of offering protec
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150 Between May 1975 and May 1987, 1,486,136 Indochinese Refugees
(including Khmer and Laotians) departed from the camps in Southeast Asia:
792,871 to the USA and 693,265 to other resettlement countries (excluding
the Orderly Departure Program). See US Congress, Senate Committee on
the Judiciary, Midyear Consultation on Refugee Programs: Hearing Before
the Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Affairs, 100th Congress, 1st
sess. June 30, 1987, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office), 1987,
p. 109.
151 See Milton Osbome, "The Indochinese Refugees: Cause and Effects,"
International Affairs, 56 (1980), pp. 39-40.
Analytical Discussion 79
tion and assistance to refugees onto the new terrain of initiating the prevention
of refugee flows.i 52
The official start of the ODP took place at a consultative meeting in
December 1978, at which the government of Hanoi agreed, with some
exceptions, to grant exit visas to all Vietnamese who wished to leave. 153 On
the basis of the personal initiative of the then Deputy High Commissioner,
Dale De Haan, to keep negotiating this issue persistently with the
government in Hanoi, the Vietnamese authorities and UNHCR reached an
understanding to operate the ODP. The official record of the agreement
says:
In furtherance of a conclusion of the Consultative Meeting held in December
1978, UNHCR signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of
Vietnam on 30 May 1979, concerning the orderly departure of family reunion and
other humanitarian cases from that country. It is hoped that an early
implementation of this programme will ease the situation in some measure. 154
The ODP established a new precedent for UNHCR in its approach to the
management of refugee problems by engaging the Office in a long-range
activity to stem an outflow of refugees. The program is also a rare example
of international cooperation in which preventive action worked, because of
the converging interests of the three major parties involved. 155 The country
of origin rid itself of elements who did not want to stay and in whom it was
not interested; the first-asylum countries could control their influx; and the
resettlement countries were able to choose their candidates in the country
of origin rather than in a camp.
One of the OOP's most important features is that it established a legal
channel for initiating a change in Vietnam's policy prohibiting the right
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152 Barry Wain, "The Indochina Refugee Crisis," Foreign Affairs, 58 (Fall
1979), p. 161, as quoted in Kumin, p. 7.
153 Statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of the Socialist
Republic of Vietnam, quoted in Kumin, Annex III. 12 January 1979, p. 254.
154 Background note dated 9 July 1979, prepared by the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees for the Meeting on Refugee and Displaced
Persons in Southeast Asia, p. 5, in (UN Doc. A/34/ 627), 7 November 1979.
United Nations. Secretary-General. Report of the Secretary-General on the
Meeting on Refugees and Displaced Persons in South East Asia. Geneva, 20
and 21 July 1979, and subsequent developments, Annex I, p. 5.
155 In the Report on the work of the organization, the Secretary-General pointed
out that the peaceful resolution of problems depends more than anything on a
convergence of interests and that such convergence now exists on important
issues confronting the world, p. 18. A/42/1,9 September 1987.