Conference on the Legal, Economic, and Social Aspects of African Refugee Problems

Extract

The presence of large numbers of refugees in independent African countries is one of their gravest problems. These refugees do not normally come into the countries of asylum in manageable numbers, but enter in tens of thousands, usually totally destitute, into regions poor in communications and social services—even for the local inhabitants—and with little if anything in the way of surplus local food supplies. The logistics and finance of providing immediate succour have presented enormous difficulties, intensified by the need to remove them as far as possible from the frontiers of their countries of origin, in order to avoid political tensions between the countries concerned and to observe the Organisation for African Unity's recommendation of 1964. Their settlement, among people who are only just self-sufficient in subsistence foods, places great strains on the technical resources of countries struggling for a decent standard of living for their own inhabitants, and deeply committed to their own development plans.