On 24 July 1957, the Economic and Social Council considered the High Commissioner's Annual Report for the period May 1956 to May 1957. The main items covered by the Report are the problem of Hungarian refugees, the international protection of refugees, and the programme of the United Nations Refugee Fund (UNREF). The members of the Council unanimously adopted a three-part Resolution, presented jointly by the delegations of Brazil, Canada, France, the Netherlands, the united Kingdom, and the United States of America, together with an amendment thereto presented by the Greek delegation.

The first part of the resolution took note of the Report prepared by the High commissioner for transmission to the Twelfth Session of the General Assembly. [1]

The second part of the resolution expressed the Councils view that the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees should be continued for a period of five years from 1 January 1959, and recommended that the General Assembly review not later than at its Seventeenth Session the question of whether the Office should be further continued.

The third part of the resolution recognized the value of the UNREF programme and noted the progress achieved. It recognized the importance of achieving permanent solutions for refugees in camps as quickly as possible. Considering that the closure of camps would be practicable only to the extent that funds were made available, the Economic and Social Council endorsed requests that the High Commissioner should intensify his programme in order to achieve permanent solutions for the greatest possible number of refugees remaining in camps, without losing sight of the need to find solutions to the problems of the refugees outside the camps. It was further recommended that the General Assembly should authorize the high Commissioner to make an appeal to States Members of the United nations and of the specialized agencies for the purpose of raising the funds needed for closing the refugee camps.

In the separate vote on the second part of this resolution, sixteen countries voted in favour, while two (the USSR and Poland) abstained. The Representative of Poland stressed that his abstention should not be interpreted as being a criticism of the personality of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, for whom he had the highest esteem. In the debate which preceded the vote, the Representative of the USSR had declared that insufficient attention was being paid to the principle of voluntary repatriation of refugees.

Earlier in the meeting, the High Commissioner had presented his Report to the Council. The text of his statement is as follows:

The High Commissioner's Statement:

1. "Mr. President, it is indeed a very great pleasure to be addressing you and the Economic and Social Council for the first time since I took up my new office. I would like, first of all, to pay a tribute to my predecessor, the late Dr. van Heuven Goedhart, who succeeded by tenacity and by his untiring efforts first to resuscitate and, afterwards, to maintain general interest in a problem which, at the beginning of his term of office, was almost a forgotten one. I should also like to pay a tribute to his creative imagination to think out ways whereby the refugee problem could by approached, ways which I try to follow. I also want to thank my staff, and especially the Deputy High Commissioner who, during the interregnum, held the fort so successfully at a moment when the office had to face the greatest emergency crisis in its life, that of the Hungarian refugee problem which came on top of all the other preoccupations created by the problems of the old refugees.

2. First, Mr. President, I would like to make some general remarks. It seems to me that Article 2 of the Statute is of primary importance and that, without this Article, it would be almost impossible for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to carry out its work. Article 2 states that the work of my Office shall be of an entirely non-political, but of a humanitarian and social character only.

3. My Office has to provide international protection, to which I attach great importance, and it has to facilitate permanent solutions for the refugees, to help them to resume a normal life. One of the functions of protection is to assure the widest possible freedom of choice for refugees. They should be able to choose their permanent solutions and these solutions, according to Article 1 of the Mandate, and in the order enumerated in the Mandate, are repatriation, emigration or integration. The free will of the refugee has to be the determining factor and that, I think, is a very important principle.

4. Every refugee problem, as it arises, should be solved as quickly as possible. Life in a refugee camp is most emphatically not a permanent solution. The only reason for the existence of a refugee camp is to serve as a reception and transit centre. The longer a refugee has to live in a camp, the more he deteriorates physically and psychologically, and the more difficult it will be to help him to start a new life. Greater financial means, and a greater effort too will then be required. To provide care and maintenance for refugees in camps is a humanitarian duty, but it does not solve the problem. Yet, to speed up permanent solution represents a real saving in terms of economics.

5. And now I would like to highlight the outstanding problems facing my office:

I do not intend, Mr. President, to go into the details of my Office's Report to the General Assembly which is before you; I think I can start by saying that a great step in the direction of speeding up permanent solutions has already been made concerning the Hungarian refugee problem. In this respect the action of the High Commissioner's Office is based on General Assembly Resolutions 1006, of 9 November 1956, 1129 of 21 November 1956 and 1039 of 23 January 1957.

6. Let us look at the problem: As of the middle of July of this year, the influx of Hungarian refugees totalled 193,500. Of these, some 174,000 went into Austria, and some 19,500 went into Yugoslavia. The Hungarian refugee problem was recognized at its very beginning as an international responsibility by the General assembly. The concrete international action undertaken by many nations took two aspects. First of all, there was emigration: up to now thirty-four countries have accepted refugees. Up to the middle of July, 142,700 had left Austria, and 7,800 had left Yugoslavia, making a total of 150,500. This was achieved to some extent by governments directly, and in most cases with the help of the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) which attained a very high degree of efficiency in this rapid and vast operation. Many countries relaxed their emigration regulations, many countries dispensed almost completely with formalities which would have slowed-down the operation. It has to be said, however, that the organization of mass emigration from Yugoslavia took considerably longer than from Austria, and was somewhat delayed.

7. The second way in which the international action manifested itself was financial assistance. It has perhaps been recognized theoretically for a long time that a country of first asylum which opens its frontiers to refugees should not be left alone to carry the financial burden, but that this financial burden should be shared by the international community. As far as the Hungarian emergency was concerned, this principle was not only recognized theoretically, but realized and implemented in practice. Austria and Yugoslavia received some financial assistance, and also received assistance from the League of Red Cross Societies, which took over care and maintenance in camps in Austria and, through the Yugoslav Red Cross, provides food to Hungarian refugees in Yugoslavia. Financial contributions, and I include here bi-lateral assistance to the Austrian Government, received in answer to joint appeals made by the Secretary-General and by the High Commissioner, reached more than twenty million dollars, of which over ten million were paid or promised directly to the High Commissioner's Office or via the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

8. Thanks to this assistance, most of the bill incurred by the Austrian Government for Hungarian refugees will be covered by the end of this year. On the other hand, Yugoslavia still faces this month, that is in July 1957, an uncovered bill of over five million dollars. In Yugoslavia at the moment, the financial situation is a critical one, as the Government has exhausted the credit granted to it by the federal Bank. It seems to me that international solidarity has not manifested itself in favour of Yugoslavia quite to the same extent as in favour of the other country of first asylum, and I hope that that state of affairs may be redressed.

9. In every refugee problem, there is also the repatriation aspect. As far as repatriation is concerned, efforts were made that Hungarian refugees who voluntarily wanted to return to their country could return. When repatriation missions visited, or visit, Austria or Yugoslavia, my Office was represented on these missions by an observer, obviously a neutral observer, whose mission it was to make sure that the refugee was not put under pressure from any side. Some 5,000 Hungarian refugees have been repatriated from Austria, some 2,400 from Yugoslavia, and some 3,200 from various countries of second asylum, a total of about 10,600 according to figures available to Office.

Now let us look at the present situation.

10. There are left today in Austria some 26,000 refugees, of whom some 13,000 are in camps. In Yugoslavia, there remain, after taking into account the 600 emigrated into the Yugoslav economy, some 8,600 all in camps.

11. It is due to an outstanding international effort that it was possible, within approximately eight months, to reduce the Hungarian refugee problem to manageable proportions, but there are still thousands of Hungarian refugees in Austria and Yugoslavia who would like to emigrate, and as I said before, the will of the refugee would be the determining factor. There are still certain quotas available, for Austria as well as for Yugoslavia, but we estimate that an additional 12,000 to 15,000 visas will be needed in order to give all the refugees who really want to emigrate the possibility to do so.

12. A great part of the work has been completed. There still remains a relatively all part of the work to be done. Would it not be possible to finish this work a year, to let those refugees emigrate who want to emigrate, to let those repatriate who want to repatriate, to help those who want to stay in the country first asylum to integrate by providing money for permanent solutions? Would it be a very worthwhile objective that it could be said that, at the end of this year, no Hungarian refugees were forced to remain in camps, wither in Austria or in Yugoslavia? It needs a relatively small effort – but sometimes it is a small effort which is harder to get.

13. I would now like, Mr. President, to come to the second problem which, in the area of the public, was for a moment overshadowed by the problem of the Hungarian refugees I just mentioned. What I am speaking about now, are the old refugees who, Austria, in many camps, saw how Hungarian refugees were, in many cases, fortunate enough to be given the possibility of emigration within a few days after their arrival, while they had been waiting for years.

14. UNREF, the United Nations Refugee Fund, created by my predecessor, is now the middle of the third year of the implementation of its programme. Due to the lateness of payments, and due also to difficulties in implementation, especially building projects, the programme is one year behind schedule. When UNREF started in 1955, there was a camp population of 84,750 in Europe. A year later, on the first of January 1956 there were 68,430 refugees in camps. On 1 January 1957, the number was 50,330. Amongst other factors UNREF contributed to this result.

What is the present situation?

15. UNREF is now in full swing, but we have to face a shortfall of $87,700,000 the amount of $16,000,000 which the Executive Committee had authorized the High Commissioner to raise. On the other hand, we are also facing new arrivals of refugees, and I do not speak here of the Hungarian refugees. As far as the camps are concerned, their inmates are getting older; some of them become more difficult to resettle every year. And it must not be forgotten that those people have children who grow up. If you look at the refugee problem facing the High Commissioner's Office, you can really see two categories.

16. First of all, there are the refugees in camps. Their number is known, their composition, and their age groups are known. Then you have the second group, the out-of-camp population. For these one has estimates, and the Executive Committee has authorized my Office to make a survey so that one will be better able to judge the problem, and see what measures should be taken to solve it. Amongst the camp population, it is estimated that, at the end of 1958, which is the end of the present mandate and end of UNREF, there will still be 30,000 refugees in the camps. Now the question is what to do.

17. I think that, when you are faced with two problems, that of the camp population and that of the out-of-camp population, the best way to deal with such problems is by defining which one can be solved rapidly and which one, perhaps, can be given second priority, and once these priorities are established, to stick to them and carry them out.

18. It seems to me that the first priority should be given to clearing the camps. This because of the facts I have already mentioned; that the refugees deteriorate rapidly, that a camp really is no place for human beings to live in, and that I think something very worthwhile would be done if the existing camps could be dissolved and the refugees in camps be given the opportunity to find a new life. The way that can be done was already indicated by my predecessor, who developed a camp dissolution plant. It is no use speaking in the abstract about dissolving a camp. What is necessary is to fix a definite date, and then the voluntary agencies who co-operate with us in such a marvellous way know that they have to find solutions.

What are these solutions?

19. Again I come back to the will of the refugees. There are many of those whom we call old refugees, earlier refugees, who still want to emigrate. Many of them have been rejected by several selection mission, and there are many amongst those who are completely healed TB cases; their family did not want to be separated from them and, therefore, the whole family is still in the camp, still wanting to emigrate. There are other cases where the families separated, part went overseas, and those who remained in the camp are still hoping that they can join the rest of the family. It seems to me that therefore we should make a two-pronged attack, and I think we can be inspired by the experience of the action concerning the Hungarian refugee problem. If the countries of emigration could have a new look at the camps, and, perhaps, relax somewhat the present regulations as was done with the Hungarian refugees, and take into account the fact that even if there is one difficult case in a family, the family as a whole will still be an economic asset to a new country, then quite a few of those people now in camps could leave camps. When that could be done then the next steps would be to find permanent solutions by way of integration, for the others, which will mean building houses, organizing vocational training ... (text missing)

[1] This Session will open in New York in the autumn of 1957.