Original scientific paper
Croatian Refugees in a World Framework
Milan Mesić
; Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The paper is concerned with refugee flows in the world context. A note is made on the emergence of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in connection with the solving of the problems of European refugees after the Second World War. Only gradually, beginning with the Hungarian revolt of 1956, did other refugee questions receive international treatment. Thus, by the 1970s an entire complex of institutions, international and regional agreements on refugees, had been created, alongside the active involvement of the United Nations. The paper mentions the in¬ternational legal definition of refugees, as given in the Convention on the status of refugees of the UN (1947), and in its extension, the Convention on the problems of refugees in Africa (1969). The author notes the basic causes of refugee flows in the Third World. He concludes that the pattern emphasised in various studies, which almost always generates refugees, and which has been described as “the competitive formation of states”, can be applied in regard to the present conflict in Yugoslavia and in Croatia. In the final part of the paper, the author reviews the causes of Croatian refugee flows, as well as the difference between the movement of Serbian refugees from Croatia to Serbia and the movement of Croatian (and other ethnic) refugees to foreign countries and to parts of Croatia beyond the area of war operations. The author advocates an active refugee policy, as an integral part of Croatian foreign policy, which would proceed from the real needs of Europe and the world in solving the Croatian refugee question.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
127434
URI
Publication date:
10.12.1991.
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