The United Nations deployed an array of humanitarian tools that coincided with this trend (the grant of temporary protection rather than permanent asylum, the creation of safe areas to reduce the likelihood of refugee flows or to encourage return, the authorization of military interventions in conflicts producing mass refugee flows, and cross-border delivery of assistance, sometimes with the use of the military, to at-risk populations) (Loescher, 2000: 54, Roberts, 1998: 375-376). First, policies aimed at preventing refugee flows coincided with the increasingly stringent nonentree policies of developed states noted above (Chimni, 1998). Second, there was greater willingness on the part of the international community to intervene in the internal affairs of sovereign states on humanitarian grounds, including where internal conflicts caused refugee flows. In what represented a significant extension of the international refugee regime beyond UNHCR, the Security Council in the post-Cold War period was prepared to be more assertive in characterizing refugee flows as a threat to regional and international security and thus a justification for action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (Loescher, 2000: 54, Roberts, 1998: 383).