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By Avis Johnson
ST KITTS, March 24, 2022 – Former St Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister and current Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, Dr Denzil Douglas has hailed former United States Secretary of States, Madeleine Albright, who died on Wednesday as a “formidable defender of human rights.”
“Madam Secretary yielded a powerful influence across several decades. She help to shape US Foreign Policy using soft power and military force,” said Dr Douglas, who noted that while Ms. Albright carried a refined forthrightness with laudable feminine strength, “she will be forever be remembered for the distinguished role she played as a formidable defender of human rights.”
Paying tribute in a statement Douglas recalled meeting Albright during US President Bill Clinton’s CARICOM-US Summit in Barbados in May 1998, at which the “Partnership for Prosperity and Security in the Caribbean” was signed.
He recalled that at the inaugural annual meeting between the CARICOM Foreign Ministers and the US Secretary of State during a working breakfast session at the Waldorf in New York in October 1998, both sides reviewed the progress made since the Barbados Summit.
Albright died age 84.
“I am deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Madeleine Albright. She was a pioneering leader in the USA public service.
As the first woman to ever become Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, she also received the 2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom for her outstanding exploits as a renowned diplomat,” said Dr Douglas in statement posted on his FaceBook Page.
Douglas served as Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of St Kitts and Nevis from 1995 to 2015 and was among Caribbean leaders who met Albright on several occasions.
Dr Douglas said Albright also “promoted democracy, pushed post Cold War alliances in support of nuclear disarmament, and peered through a pragmatic multicultural lens, to engage the global community.”
He noted before her death, the Secretary of State chaired many organizations including the National Democratic Institute and Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.
“Madeleine will be greatly missed by her friends and families, and all those public servants whose lives she touched and whom she mentored. May her soul rest in peace and rise in celestial glory,” Dr Douglas said.
Dr Madeleine K. Albright was the 64th U.S. Secretary of State. She died from cancer and was surrounded by family and friends.
President Bill Clinton chose Albright as America’s top diplomat in 1996, and she served in that capacity for the last four years of the Clinton administration.
At the time, she was the highest-ranking woman in the history of U.S. government. She was not in the line of succession for the presidency, however, because she was a native of Czechoslovakia.

File Image of St Kitts and Nevis’ Prime Minister Dr Denzil Douglas (right) and United States Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright at the Waldorf in New York in 1998, courtesy of Dr Douglas’ FaceBook Page.