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Refugees – 1992

According to the Human Rights Watch Annual Report, at the end of 1992, the UNHCR had safely transported over 200,000 refugees back to Cambodia. However, the repatriation plan had been reformulated several times throughout the process, weakening safeguards that were to ensure the free choice of destination on the part of refugees. The diminished protection was significant because the political factions controlling the Thai border camps were seeking to maintain their control by coercing some refugees to resettle in their small “zones” near the border.¹ As part of the repatriation program, every returning family was promised two hectares of farmland.² However, three months into the repatriation process, the UNHCR had found almost no suitable land for the returnees. In Battambang province, where most returnees wanted to settle, more than half the farmland was believed to be mined. The remaining land was unavailable. Therefore, the UNHCR was forced to redesign its repatriation package. Instead of farmland, the returnees were now offered a village house, tools for a new business, or cash – $50 per adult and $25 per child.³

1. “Cambodia,” Human Rights Watch World Report 1993, accessed July 25, 2010, http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/WR93/Asw-04.htm#P105_41321.
2. Shaun Williams, “Internally Displaced Persons and Property Rights in Cambodia,” Refugee Survey Quarterly (2000): 19(2): 194-200.
3. “Returning to a home in ruins REFUGEES: A few Cambodians return, braving mines and devastation,” The Globe and Mail (Canada), June 29, 1992.