Survival is harsh, recovery slow in hard-hit areas.

• Position: Aftermath of Persian Gulf war

Months after the Persian Gulf war had ended, the lives of millions of people in the area were still in turmoil. Tattered social and economic structures were barely starting to recover from the ravages of war ecological disaster, civil strife and the most massive displacement of civilian populations in recent history. Survival was the immediate goal.

A wave of unrest struck Iraq immediately after the cessation on 28 February of hostilities between Iraqi and coalition forces. Widespread fighting triggered what had become by early April a vast humanitarian calamity. In a matter of days, an estimated 1.5 million Iraqi citizens, mostly Kurds, fled towards and across bleak mountain borders with Turkey and Iran to escape the conflict.

On 2 April, the SecretaryGeneral expressed his grave concern about the substantial increase in the number of Kurdish and Shi'ite refugees entering Iran and Turkey. He urged maximum restraint and a peaceful resolution of the situation.

Reacting to the crisis, the Security Council on 5 April demanded that Iraq immediately end the repression of its civilian population, including those in Kurdish-populated areas, and insisted that it allow international humanitarian organizations immediate access to all those in need of assistance.

By resolution 688 (1991), the Council called the massive flow of refugees across international frontiers and cross-border incursions a threat to international peace and security in the region. The Secretary-General was asked to send a mission to investigate the situation.

The resolution was adopted by a vote of 10 to 3 (Cuba, Yemen, Zimbabwe), with 2 abstentions (China, India).

Turkey charged Iraq with deliberately pressing some 220,000 Iraqi citizens, many of them women and children, towards the Turkish border, in order to drive them out of their country.

Iran at the Council session said that it had had "the humanitarian duty of providing refuge ... to more than 110,000 Iraqi civilians escaping their own Government's armed forces".

Iraq asserted that saboteurs who had penetrated its borders had killed many innocent people and, through terror and intimidation, convinced many citizens to leave the country. The Government and the army had to protect security and ensure law and order. The Iraqi Government had declared a general amnesty. All Iraqi citizens could return at any time, it said.

Many speakers at the Council session stressed that their action in favour of Iraqi refugees was purely...