The High Commissioner in his opening statement to the eighteenth session stated that the problem of refugees in some of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean had increased as a result of recent events and that in certain areas in Africa changing local conditions and the fluctuating character of the problems of refugees had created the need to adapt assistance programmes and had sometimes delayed their implementation. The High Commissioner also referred to the situation of refugees in Asia and Latin America and to the problems of the severely handicapped in Europe for whom a solution was at last in sight. Also covered were the major developments in protection, including the coming into force of the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees and the recommendations adopted by the OAU Heads of States meeting in Kinshasa. In the general debate, the Committee stressed again the crucial importance of ensuring that, upon completion of UNHCR assistance programmes for the local settlement of refugees in developing areas, the integration of refugees be included in the wider framework of development programmes carried out by other members of the UN system. The Committee considered the report on the frequency of Executive Committee sessions submitted by the High Commissioner and decided henceforth to hold one session annually in the autumn to comply with a recommendation of the Ad-Hoc Committee of Experts on the Finances of the UN concerning the reduction of conference programmes. The Committee considered a report on international protection in which special reference was made to the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, the question of asylum, the International Year for Human Rights and the promotional aspect of international protection. The report listed in particular the various practical measures through which refugees might be able to benefit from Human Rights Year, including the accession by States to a number of important legal instruments. In this context, the Executive Committee for the first time included conclusions on international protection in the final report of the session. The report on the resettlement of refugees and the Note on the problem of the residual group of severely handicapped refugees in Europe were considered together by the Committee. The representative of the High Commissioner, in introducing the documents, reported a continued influx of asylum seekers, coupled with a decline in the number of refugees within the mandate of UNHCR moving to resettlement countries. During the discussion on the UNHCR Programme for 1967 - New and Revised Projects, the observer for the World Food Programme stated that, since the seventeenth session, new allocations totalling.