On this day two years ago, the 64th US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, died aged 84. Her legacy in Africa and the Middle East is grim.
Between 1993 and 1997, she was the US envoy to the UN. In that capacity, she obstructed UN efforts to take action over the genocide being perpetrated in Rwanda, thereby allowing the massacres to go on for longer, resulting in the deaths of over 800,000 Rwandans.
She was State Secretary from 1997-2001 – overlapping with UN sanctions on Iraq, pushed for mainly by the US and the UK, under which an estimated half a million children lost their lives.
The astonishing callousness of US foreign policy comes out crystal clear in this 1997 clip of Albright – in which she is asked whether the huge cost in children’s lives was worth it. Her response is worth bearing in mind when we think of the child death toll in the US-funded war in Gaza right now. Can you guess her answer?