Refuge for the selected few

Before 1968, the focus of attention was on those people who met the international definition of a refugee (" . . . persons who flee their own country because of ... a well-founded fear or persecution . . . "). However, during the Indochina wars, millions of internally displaced persons (IDPs) remained beyond the reach of UNHCR and other international agencies. In the 1970s and 1980s, ideological conflicts in Indochina, the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan, Central America, Mozambique, and Angola, generated millions of refugees. Western countries generously supported aid programmes for refugees from socialist states, while neglecting IDPs trapped in zones of conflict. The Soviet bloc neither supported nor funded UNHCR or other relief efforts.