Others are not so fortunate. Today most UN and other major international humanitarian organizations take some part in assisting and protecting the inter- nally displaced even though none has a specific, legally recognized mandate to do so. This chapter looks at who the main ones are and just what they are doing. But in other countries it has taken little or no part in aiding the internally dis- placed, even when, as in Colombia, a government has asked it to do so. But venturing into protecting and assisting the internally displaced has been a challenge that the agency has assumed with both hesitation and frequent misgiv- ings.
Refugees are by definition outside the borders of their coun- try.
For the internally displaced it has nothing of the kindle its operations are circumscribed by what the host gov- ernment will tolerate, and they involve higher risks to agency staff. Refugee advocates have expressed concern that by assisting and protecting internally displaced per- sons the agency may put itself in the position of discouraging persons in danger from becoming refugees, and that its actions in that sense could over governments a pretext for refusal to grant asylum. The figure, small in comparison to the overall need, nonetheless represents a broadening of the agency's scope of activities for the internally displaced. As its name implies the UN Development Programme is an eco- nomic development agency. Photograph by R.Redmond, 1.