International donors should pressure Guinea to uphold the refugees' right to asylum on Guinean soil and move with dispatch to transfer the refugees' border camps to safer locations inside Guinea. Temporary relocation sites should be constructed immediately. Unfortunately, far too often in this region over the years, distribution of relief food has become a magnet for attacks by combatants eager to loot. The UN refugee agency should minimize distribution of aid in Guinea's border areas where refugees and aid workers are defenseless against armed attacks. International relief agencies that are seeking, by instinct, to rush large amounts of emergency aid into dangerous border areas risk committing a blunder that could get their beneficiaries killed.
Humanitarian workers have only limited options, however.
The neediest people often tend to live in the most dangerous locations. Real solutions to the region's destabilization will only occur when the international community puts the hammer to the RUF rebels in Sierra Leone and their benefactor, Liberia's President Taylor. The UN Security Council might consider a range of measures to address the region's widening conflict. At a minimum, the Security Council should impose sanctions on Taylor's lucrative trafficking of diamonds and timber. With American leadership, the UN should also slap a worldwide travel ban on Taylor and his associates, freeze the international assets of Taylor and others who support the RUF rebels, and ground Liberian-registered aircraft.