Today, of the 27 million people presently under UNHCR responsibility worldwide, nearly 6 million are displaced persons. There is nothing very surprising about that. Like the refugees who are under UNHCR protection, displaced persons are the victims of armed conflict, discrimination or persecution. Some say they are refugees in all but name. From a legal point of view, however, the fact that these victims have not crossed an international border is extremely significant. In fact, they do not enjoy the same rights as refugees, since the 1951 Convention on the status of refugees as "being outside their country of nationality or of habitual residence." But above and beyond the strict legal definitions, the ability of international organizations like UNHCR to intervene is very much determined by the presence or not of a frontier between the displaced persons and the authorities of their home country. Sovereign states are often unwilling to allow the international community to intervene in problems affecting their own citizens within their national boundaries. Moreover, the operational and practical difficulties involved in such intervention cannot be underestimated. By definition, working with internally displaced persons means working under dangerous conditions, often near or even in the middle of a combat zone—much closer, in any case, to the battlefield than would be any refugee camp.