Military

DATE=05/29/03

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=REFUGEE SURVEY (L-O)

NUMBER=2-303771

BYLINE=LAURIE KASSMAN

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: In its annual survey, the U-S Committee for Refugees lists more than 13-million people as refugees and asylum seekers and nearly 22-million as internally displaced persons. The report says conflict and human-rights abuses last year added more than four-million people to that total. The report's authors criticized the U-S and other governments for increasingly restricted access for refugees, leaving many in limbo for years. Correspondent Laurie Kassman has the details in Washington.

TEXT: The executive director of the U-S Committee for Refugees says six out of 10 refugees are women and children. Lavinia Limon underlines that behind the statistics are countless stories of human suffering. And, she says, the situation is getting worse, not better.

/// LIMON ACT ///

According to international law, the durable solution is clearly repatriation when it is safe to go home, perhaps resettlement in place in the country of first asylum and perhaps third-country resettlement. What we see increasingly is that refugees are not given any of those solutions, but in fact are warehoused around the world. So, in fact, generations of people are growing up in refugee camps, with their lives in limbo and no hope for their future.

/// END ACT ///

Ms Limon criticizes a trend in the United States and Europe to restrict access for asylum-seekers as part of their war against terrorism.

She says the U-S government resettled only 27-thousand asylum seekers last year, the lowest number in three decades and less than half the total admitted in the year preceding the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

/// LIMON ACT TWO ///

We would like to point out that refugees are in fact fleeing terror. They are not terrorists.

/// END ACT ///

The refugee report highlights the steady increase of refugees fleeing conflict and persecution in more than one-dozen countries in Africa and Asia, and the sharp increase of displaced persons fleeing conflict in Colombia. The annual survey notes an increasing number of countries forcibly returning or closing their doors to refugees, including China's rejection of North Korean refugees, Cambodia's forced return of Vietnamese Montagnards, and Guinea's rejection of refugees fleeing conflicts in Ivory Coast and Liberia.

Still, Ms. Limon noted some positive developments.

/// LIMON ACT TWO ///

The U-S and its allies, in its overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, paved the way for the repatriation of one-point-eight million Afghans, some of whom had been out of the country for more than 20 years. It was the largest, fastest U-N-H-C-R-assisted repatriation in more than three decades. In addition, some 900-thousand displaced Angolans and refugees were able to return home after the death of Jonas Savimbi and the subsequent peace accord between the government and the rebels.

/// END ACT ///

The survey also notes that an end to civil wars in Sri Lanka and Sierra Leone also led to the repatriation of several-hundred-thousand refugees.

The U-S refugee committee's world survey provides both statistics on refugees and information about government policies affecting their movement in more than 130 countries around the world. (SIGNED)

NEB/LMK/RAE