Returnees to Vietnam
The Well-Being Of Former Unaccompanied Minors

Maryanne Loughry and Nguyen Xuan Nghia

Background
Vietnamese refugees first fled Vietnam in 1975 with the fall of Saigon. Subsequently more than one million people fled, and resettled in other countries. In 1988 in Hong Kong and 1989 in Southeast Asian countries, it was determined that the Vietnamese who were still leaving Vietnam would be screened individually for refugee status and given the right to appeal before being eligible for resettlement. This arrangement became known as the Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA), and the Vietnamese were held in detention centers in asylum countries while awaiting their refugee status determination. Under the CPA more than 150,000 Vietnamese people lived in detention, 80,000 were resettled in new countries, and 72,200 returned to Vietnam (UNHCR, 1995). More than 3,000 of those who returned to Vietnam were children under eighteen years of age that had lived in the camps in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia since 1989 without parents or adult relatives, unaccompanied children.

Volume 7, Forced Migration