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UNITED
NATIONS
A
        General Assembly
Distr.
GENERAL
A/55/391
18 September 2000

Original: English
Fifty-fifth session
Agenda item 84
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near East


Persons displaced as a result of the June 1967 and subsequent hostilities

Report of the Secretary-General*


1. The present report is submitted to the General Assembly in pursuance of paragraph 5 of its resolution 54/71 of 6 December 1999, entitled “Persons displaced as a result of the June 1967 and subsequent hostilities”, the operative paragraphs of which read as follows:

2. On 9 August 2000, the Secretary-General addressed a note verbale to the Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, in which he drew attention to his reporting responsibility under the resolution and requested the Permanent Representative to inform him of any action his Government had taken or envisaged to take in implementation of the relevant provisions of the resolution.

3. In a note verbale dated 6 September 2000, the Permanent Representative of Israel replied as follows:

4. In connection with paragraph 2 of General Assembly resolution 54/71, the Secretary-General has obtained from the Commissioner-General of UNRWA the information available to him on the return of refugees registered with the Agency. As indicated in previous reports on the subject, the Agency is not involved in any arrangements for the return of refugees, nor is it involved in any arrangements for the return of displaced persons that are not registered as refugees. Its information is based on requests by returning registered refugees for transfer of their entitlements for services to the areas to which they have returned and subsequent correction of records. The Agency would not necessarily be aware of the return of any registered refugees who did not request the provision of services. So far as is known to the Agency, between 1 July 1999 and 30 June 2000, 1,278 refugees registered with UNRWA returned to the West Bank and 218 to the Gaza Strip. It should be noted that some of these may not themselves have been displaced in 1967, but may be members of the family of a displaced registered refugee whom they accompanied on his return or joined thereafter. Thus, taking into account the estimate given in paragraph 4 of last year’s report (A/54/377), the number of displaced registered refugees who are known by the Agency to have returned to the occupied territories since June 1967 is about 19,876. The Agency is unable to estimate the total number of displaced inhabitants who have returned. It keeps records only of registered refugees and, as pointed out above, even those records, particularly with respect to the location of registered refugees, may be incomplete.

5. In connection with paragraph 3 of General Assembly resolution 54/71, the Secretary-General refers to the report of the Commissioner-General of UNRWA for the period from 1 July 1999 to 30 June 2000 (A/55/13) and to the previous reports of the Commissioner-General for accounts of the continuous and ongoing assistance provided by UNRWA to persons displaced and in need of continued assistance.


______________
* The submission of the present report was dependent on the response from the relevant Member State, which was received on 6 September 2000.

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