William Mullen

The image of tens of thousands of people fleeing their homes for the sanctuary of foreign borders has become so commonplace that it no longer is big news. Often it...

Westerners working with the Hmong in the camps, however, believe that is the compelling reason older Hmong are reluctant to leave for America. ''They get letters from relatives in the...

The last decade is rife with incidents of governments sending their armies across borders to attack UNHCR refugee camps on punitive raids. Guatemala has sent expeditions into Mexico against Guatemalan...

Even the UN is having difficulty getting sufficient food and other supplies into Malawi to care for the refugees. Renamo continues to sabotage two main rail lines that once carried...

Tran Huu Tiep told me his story in Hei Ling Chau camp six weeks before Hong Kong announced its June policy of repatriation for Vietnam refugees. Since then the camp`s...

''On the land something happened,'' Sa said. She is unclear about the details, but Vietnamese authorities apparently arrived suddenly on the beach. Those caught on shore were arrested, though Sa`s...

UNBRO, the agency providing physical assistance to 300,000 Cambodian refugees along the Thai-Cambodian border, is another political creation. Its mandate does not include protecting the refugees; that is the responsibility...

One example is El Salvador. ''In order to receive official assistance,'' the commission`s report said, ''displaced Salvadorans must register with authorities and provide details of their personal background. Many refuse...

Wars create refugees, and refugees prolong wars. If there is a truism about late 20th Century warfare, that is it. Wars of independence, civil wars, border conflicts, internal revolutions and...

The war in Afghanistan has gone on so long, however, and the refugees have become such permanent fixtures that outside contributions for their care began to diminish in 1987, forcing...