President Sirleaf: Lift Diamond Sanctions

A call to the international community to lift the ban on exporting diamonds from Liberia was made by Liberia’s President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. In a speech given at Georgetown University, Sirleaf said diamond sanctions are an economic sanction.

During her speech to foreign policy students, President Sirleaf acknowledged the need for Liberia to cooperate with international norms, but added that responsibility also lies with the West.

“As an international community, we must also work harder to curb the tools of war,” she said. “Liberia is still under economic sanctions, because our diamonds were used to fund conflict. We need those sanctions lifted, but we have also understood our responsibility to police diamond exports. At the same time, diamond importing countries must better ensure that they are not customers for conflict diamonds.”

She described to the listeners the hardship her country is facing following the civil war, citing as an example what happened in one county. Lofa County, bordering Sierra Leone and Guinea, had major investors in its minerals, had fertile land and a thriving fishing industry, she recounted.

“All that disappeared. Mining halted as faction leaders tapped gold and diamonds to fuel their conflict.”

”Today, half of our people struggle to exist on less than 50 cents a day. Well over three-quarters live on less than a dollar a day. We have close to 80 percent unemployment in the formal sector – and a large percentage of those without jobs are young men skilled only in warfare,” she said, adding that when she took office, the country’s infrastructure was almost completely destroyed, with no government-provided electricity, no water and only cellular telephones.

To underline Liberia’s need for help from the international community, including the lifting of diamond sanctions, Sirleaf detailed the enormity of the country’s financial problem: “Our external debt burden is 3.7 billion dollars – more than 1,200 dollars for every man, woman and child – in a nation, you will recall, where three-fourths of the population subsists on less than a dollar a day. The external debt represents 800 percent of our annual GDP and 3,000 percent of our annual export earnings.”