Proclamation 3292—World Refugee Year

Whereas the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 5, 1958, adopted a resolution for a World Refugee Year to begin in June 1959, and urged members of the United Nations and of its specialized agencies to cooperate, in accordance with the national wishes and needs of each country and from a humanitarian point of view, in promoting a World Refugee Year as a practical means of securing increased assistance for refugees throughout the world; and

Whereas the United States, consistent with its traditional principles of humanity, sympathy, and interest in the welfare of other peoples of the world, cosponsored and supported the resolution for a World Refugee Year; and

Whereas the aims of the World Refugee Year are to focus interest on the refugee problem; to encourage additional financial contributions from governments, voluntary agencies, and the general public for solution of the problem; and to provide additional opportunities for permanent refugee solutions, through voluntary repatriation, resettlement or integration, with due regard for humanitarian considerations and in accordance with the freely expressed wishes of the refugees themselves; and

Whereas there has been established recently a United States Committee for Refugees, composed of prominent citizens and representatives of American voluntary welfare agencies, which has expressed a willingness to assume major responsibility for organizing and assisting in the plans for participation of United States citizens in the World Refugee Year:

Now, Therefore, I, Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States of America, do proclaim the period from July 1, 1959, to June 30, 1960, as World Refugee Year; and I invite all of our citizens to support generously, either through the voluntary welfare agencies or the United States Committee for Refugees, the programs developed in furtherance of that Year for the assistance of refugees.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

DONE at the City of Washington this 19th day of May in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and fifty-nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and eighty-third.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

By the President:

DOUGLAS DILLON,

Acting Secretary of State.