A/HRC/4/38 page 17 61. The mainstreaming activities have obliged the Representative to closely examine the added value of his mandate as compared to other parts of the United Nations currently engaged in responding to the needs of internally displaced persons. In line with the conclusions of the Secretary-General’s review of the new mechanism on internal displacement (E/CN.4/2006/69), the Representative has come to the firm conclusion that his activities fill an important gap in the international response to IDP protection needs as no other agency currently undertakes the same work his mandate does. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) does not have an IDP unit and UNHCR, for its part, is becoming increasingly engaged in the protection of internally displaced persons, but mainly in complex emergencies and without a mainstreaming mandate or capacity. The Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) are active throughout humanitarian crises but not during the whole spectrum of time that encompasses the human rights related protection issues for internally displaced persons and, thus, they do not cover countries such as Georgia, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina and others visited by the Representative. However, if these other parts of the international architecture did not exist, the Representative’s mandate in and of itself would be woefully insufficient, given the lack of resources inherent to the system of special procedures and the fact that they are not called upon to be operational on the ground. A. Humanitarian actors The Operational Guidelines on Human Rights and Natural Disasters 62. In June 2006, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) adopted Operational Guidelines for the Protection of Persons Affected by Natural Disasters (see addendum 1 to the present report, A/HRC/4/38/Add.1) that had been proposed by the Representative after an inclusive consultative process with all the members of the IASC.4 These Operational Guidelines on Human Rights and Natural Disasters were drafted on request of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for the Tsunami and Deputy Relief Coordinator in order to help humanitarian actors to be aware of the human rights dimensions of their work. A user-friendly printed version was completed in December 2006 and distributed to all the humanitarian agencies for use by their staff and volunteers in natural disaster situations. At the time of writing, the pilot manual designed to help the implementation of the Operational Guidelines is scheduled for printing and distribution in February 2007. 63. The Operational Guidelines do not list the rights of persons or complement existing international law. They rather focus on “what humanitarian actors should do to in order to implement a rights-based approach to humanitarian action in the context of natural disasters”.5 The opening General Principles remind the humanitarian actors that persons affected by natural disasters have the same rights and freedoms under human rights law as others in their country. They also emphasize that the affected States are first and foremost responsible for the assistance and protection of affected persons, whether they have become displaced due to the consequences of the disaster or not. They then point to the roles and obligations of humanitarian actors. 64. The Operational Guidelines have been welcomed by the humanitarian community and are currently being field-tested.