OCTOBER 2016 Managing the “Boat People” Crisis: The Comprehensive Plan of Action for Indochinese Refugees DESPERATE MIGRATION SERIES NO. 2 ALEXANDER CASELLA Cover Photo: A thirty-five-foot fishing ABOUT THE AUTHOR boat approaches a US navy ship 350 miles northeast of Cam Ranh Bay, ALEXANDER CASELLA is a writer for Asia Times and a Vietnam, after eight days at sea, May consultant on issues related to migration. He worked as an 15, 1984. US Department of the Navy. independent journalist covering the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1975. He worked for the UN Refugee Agency from Disclaimer: The views expressed in this paper represent those of the author 1975 to 1996, serving in Hanoi, Geneva, Beirut, and and not necessarily those of the Bangkok. International Peace institute. IPI welcomes consideration of a wide range of perspectives in the pursuit of a well-informed debate on critical ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS policies and issues in international affairs. IPI owes a debt of gratitude to its many donors for their generous support. IPI Publications Adam Lupel, Vice President Albert Trithart, Assistant Editor Madeline Brennan, Assistant Production Editor Suggested Citation: Alexander Casella, “Managing the ‘Boat People’ Crisis: The Comprehensive Plan of Action for Indochinese Refugees,” New York: International Peace Institute, October 2016. © by International Peace Institute, 2016 All Rights Reserved www.ipinst.org CONTENTS Executive Summary . 1 Introduction . 1 Origins of the Crisis . 2 International Response to the New Crisis . 3 AN INDIVIDUAL-LED, FIELD-DRIVEN INITIATIVE ADOPTING THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN OF ACTION FOUNDATIONS OF THE CPA REACTIONS TO THE PLAN Implementing the Plan . 6 PUTTING THE PROCEDURES IN MOTION THE MASS INFORMATION CAMPAIGN THE END OF THE EXODUS—AND OF THE COLD WAR THE PROBLEM OF REPATRIATION Conclusion . 10 1 Executive Summary It was only once Vietnam became involved that a solution to the crisis became possible. Spanning a period of twenty-one years, the 4. UN crisis response can be most effective when a Vietnamese “boat people” exodus was the last single agency is in the lead. The CPA benefited major refugee crisis of the Cold War. It started in from UNHCR being the only agency substan - the spring of 1975 after the fall of Saigon and tively involved in its implementation. resumed in 1978, as tens of thousands of 5. Countries’ involvement in responding to Vietnamese took to sea, headed for Hong Kong or refugee crises does not necessarily translate into the countries of Southeast Asia. The international them adopting refugee law. Most of the response agreed on in Geneva in 1979 was in line countries of Southeast Asia continued to reject with Western Cold War values—all Vietnamese the Refugee Convention. fleeing the communist regime were automatically recognized as refugees and resettled in the West— 6. Refugees and migrants are easy victims of but by 1988 it had begun to unravel. The new rumors and disinformation. One of the reasons international response took the form of the the CPA was successful was that a mass Comprehensive Plan of Action for Indochinese information campaign let Vietnamese people Refugees (CPA), which was in place from 1989 to know it existed. 1996. 7. Durable solutions must address both refugees The CPA was revolutionary in two ways. First, it and migrants. Probably the main achievement was comprehensive, made up of five mutually of the CPA was to bridge the asylum-migration supporting components: (1) screening for refugee conundrum and replace it, in fact if not in status, (2) resettlement of those granted refugee words, with a solution to population movement status, (3) repatriation of those denied refugee in general. status, (4) streamlining of a program allowing Introduction people to apply for refugee status from Vietnam, and (5) a mass campaign to inform Vietnamese of While all asylum and migration crises have their the CPA’s provisions. Second, its individual own specific characteristics, they share one components were predicated on two fundamental common principle: the preferred solution is for rights: the right of Vietnamese boat people to land people to voluntarily return to their home and their right to be processed for refugee status. countries, provided that the conditions leading to As a result, the CPA both saved lives and marked the exodus no longer prevail. In parallel, this the transition from blanket recognition of refugee requires establishing a system of asylum for status to individual status determination—all in a refugees and of mandatory return for those not region whose countries had not ratified the Refugee entitled to refugee status. Establishing such a Convention. system requires the involvement of the country of While all refugee situations are different, the origin, where conditions must emerge to make CPA provides lessons that could extend beyond the such a solution possible. Indochinese refugee crisis: The Comprehensive Plan of Action for 1. Decisive action sometimes depends on initia - Indochinese Refugees (CPA), which was in place tives undertaken by enterprising individuals in from 1989 to 1996, was a practical implementation the field. Plans to address the refugee crisis in of this approach to address Vietnam’s “boat Indochina only progressed due to individual people” crisis. Twenty years after the end of this initiative. agreement, this report considers what lessons could 2. New approaches to refugee crises are bound to be learned from the CPA, some of which could be be controversial. The NGO community was not relevant to today’s migration crises, including the attuned to the CPA’s wholesale rethinking of the movement of people from Africa and the Middle refugee crisis and thus largely opposed it. East to Europe. In Vietnam, conceiving the CPA 3. Comprehensive solutions require the commit - required initiative, imagination, some daring, and, ment and involvement of the country of origin. perhaps most importantly of all, involvement of the 2 Alexander Casella country of origin. It also benefited from the shift in the 1951 Refugee Convention. 2 This, along with the external conditions resulting from the end of the absence of a territorial solution, deprived the Cold War. All of these elements seem lacking from Vietnamese boat people of the right to asylum, responses to today’s migration crises. 1 making resettlement in Western countries the only possible outcome. Origins of the Crisis While the 1951 Refugee Convention provides a clear definition of the term “refugee” and, as such, Spanning a period of twenty-one years, the a legal basis for protection claims, individual Vietnamese “boat people” exodus was the last refugee determination procedures were the major refugee crisis of the Cold War. It started in exception rather than the rule. As most people were the spring of 1975, when some 140,000 Vietnamese fleeing from the East to the West, and with were evacuated from Saigon by the United States in communist countries imposing penalties for illegal the weeks before the city fell to North Vietnam. departure so severe that they amounted to persecu - After a hiatus of about two years, the exodus tion, Western countries considered simply fleeing resumed in 1978, as tens of thousands of from a communist regime as sufficient grounds to Vietnamese took to sea, headed for Hong Kong or warrant refugee status. And so, it was formally the countries of Southeast Asia. agreed that all Vietnamese boat people would be While in theory the international response to this automatically recognized as refugees and resettled exodus could have drawn upon lessons learned in the only countries that would accept them— from previous Cold War refugee crises, the refugee Western countries. crisis in Indochina presented new challenges that This solution was formally adopted at the the international community had never previously International Conference on Indochinese Refugees encountered. in July 1979. At the time, it was the only approach Refugee crises had traditionally been regional that was coherent both with reality and with the phenomena that were addressed through regional values that the West stood for in the Cold War. solutions. By and large, refugees did not overflow Ultimately, however, it proved to be a Western their own geographic areas. African refugees fled to solution in an Asian context; after having initially neighboring African countries, Hungarian and served its purpose, it became part of the problem. Czech refugees were granted asylum by other By 1988, the agreement reached in Geneva had Western countries, and Palestinians were housed begun to unravel. Considering that all of the in camps in the Middle East. In Asia, when the countries of the region (with the exception of Communists came to power in China in 1949, China) were adamant in their refusal to provide many members of the Kuomintang found asylum asylum to any Vietnamese arriving by boat, the in Taiwan. Likewise, when Vietnam was divided in system hinged on resettlement in Western 1954, almost 1 million North Vietnamese sought countries. This was the nonnegotiable precondi - refuge in South Vietnam rather than live under a tion for allowing the Vietnamese boat arrivals to communist regime. land. No such solution proved available to Vietnam’s In parallel to the 1979 conference in Geneva, the boat people. Indeed, with the exception of China, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) had signed an which provided asylum to some 260,000 agreement with the Vietnamese authorities setting Vietnamese of Chinese origin, all the countries of up an Orderly Departure Program (ODP). The Southeast Asia adamantly refused to grant ODP was to enable qualifying Vietnamese to leave permanent asylum to any Vietnamese boat person. the country legally. It was expected to provide a Moreover, none of the countries of the Association credible alternative to illegal departure and thus to of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had signed 1 Sources for this report include interviews with two of the four originators of the CPA conducted in June and July 2016, documents shared by these interviewees, and the author’s personal notes.