The United States has a historical, nonpartisan, priority commitment to humanitarian assistance to refugees. Americans care about refugees because we are a compassionate people, because we ourselves are a nation of global ties, and because our national interests abroad involve us inextricably in refugees' fates.
When waves of humanity surge across borders, it matters little whether the persons arriving are legally eligible to be considered refugees, displaced persons, or persons of concern under the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' extended mandate. At the beginning, they are fearful, hungry, sick, fleeing people. The world's response is to care for them, provide them the necessities of life and sort out identities, priorities, and criteria later.
It is generally accepted that the present refugee population worldwide numbers over 12 million, with millions more who are displaced or "at risk" in "refugee-like circumstances." Africa is the area most extensively affected. Mozambican refugees have fled to all surrounding countries; one-tenth of the population is outside of Mozambique. Malawi hosts some 500,000 Mozambican refugees; the Republic of South Africa has approximately 200,000 within its borders. Refugees of the fighting in Angola have also spread to neighboring areas. In Ethiopia, warfare, repressive government policies such as forced resettlement, and tribal persecution have forced well over one million people into exile. Sudan is host to some 650,000 refugees from Ethiopia, plus several hundred thousand more from Uganda and Chad. Throughout Africa, drought, famine, and feeble economies have exacerbated refugee movements provoked by insurgencies.
In Southeast Asia, the aftermath of the Vietnam War has caused the flight of 1.3 million refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The flow of boat people leaving Vietnam continues at a rate exceeding 20,000 people annually; smaller numbers of refugees continue to leave Laos. Thailand is the most heavily impacted country in the region: It is the first asylum of some 130,000 refugees and hosts a population of some 260,000 Cambodian "displaced persons," located in camps near the Thai-Cambodian border, who have fled the Vietnamese occupation.
The oldest refugee situation in the world is that of the Palestinians in the Middle East, a refugee community now in its third generation. More than two million Palestinians in Israel's Occupied Territories, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria are registered to receive international assistance.
Refugees from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, including Jewish émigrés, also continue to seek asylum. Well-established procedures to process them exist in Western Europe and the major resettlement countries: Australia, Canada, Israel, and the United States. In the last 10 years, 185,000 of these people have sought a new life in America.
In Central America, the total number of acknowledged refugees in first asylum within the region is more than 300,000.
The best news in the world refugee panorama is for the more than five million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran. With the signing of the Geneva peace accords on Afghanistan in April and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from their homeland, these Afghans can get poised for the trek
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