Madeleine Albright by Read My Pins: Stories From a Diplomat's Jewel Box

Author:Read My Pins: Stories From a Diplomat's Jewel Box
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Crafts & Hobbies, Ambassadors - United States, International Relations, Jewelry, Women Cabinet Officers, Brooches - Private Collections - United States, Brooches, Political, Cabinet Officers, General, United States, Personal Memoirs, Women Cabinet Officers - United States, Political Science, Albright, Biography & Autobiography, Ambassadors, Women, Madeleine Korbel, Biography, Private Collections
ISBN: 9780060899189
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2009-09-29T05:00:00+00:00

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Perhaps it is my imagination, but this pin always seems to end the day higher on my jacket than where it began.

I was reminded while secretary of state that there is a political dimension to the operations of the gem industry. Valuable resources attract feverish competition for access and control. To regulate the market, the world has created a system that encourages trade based on agreed-upon standards and rules. In some cases, as with endangered species, those rules prohibit trade. In others, our leaders have found it necessary to limit or ban sales from particular countries. Two examples during my tenure are worthy of mention.

Jade has been called the stone of Heaven. It is a personal favorite of mine and has been sought after for centuries, initially by Chinese emperors and Asian warlords, more recently by lovers of fine gems on every continent. Carat for carat, jade’s value has soared. It is disquieting, then, that the majority of the world’s most precious jade (or, more properly, jadeite) is mined in Burma, home to some of the poorest people and one of the most repressive governments on Earth. Until the mid-1990s, ethnic groups controlled the mines, using the revenue to preserve autonomy from the military regime. Over the past decade, the government has seized control of the mines, exploiting them (and the beaten-down souls who labor in them) for money and power. While in office, I championed economic sanctions against Burma; these have since been extended to include the most lucrative types of Burmese gems that are processed elsewhere. The ban is firmly supported by the Jewelers Vigilance Committee (a legal compliance group), the trade association Jewelers of America, and such leading international firms as Cartier and Tiffany.

In 1999, I visited a camp for amputees in Sierra Leone. It was a sweltering, muddy, crowded place. I remember especially holding a three-year-old girl who wore a red jumper and played with a toy car, using the only arm she had. Like many poor countries, Sierra Leone required voters to dip their fingers into indelible ink to prevent double-voting. The best-equipped rebel group felt it could frustrate the elections by chopping off the hands of potential voters, including children. This militia, and others in Angola and Congo, was financed in part by what came to be known as “blood” or “conflict” diamonds. These were diamonds seized and trafficked by armed groups that killed indiscriminately, often employing preteen soldiers.

Human rights activists appealed to me to try to stop the commercial use of such stones to fuel civil wars in Africa. I agreed. We supported a diplomatic initiative—known as the Kimberley Process—that is now accepted by every major diamond-producing and diamond-consuming country. Its purpose is to ensure that the much-coveted stones are traded legitimately from the time they leave a mine until the moment they appear in storefront windows. Like any such system, it is not leakproof, but it has done much to squeeze the profit out of blood diamonds, in part because the process has been widely backed by legitimate dealers.

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