by WENDY PAPAKOSTANDINI
Diamonds are often esteemed as a universal symbol for luxury and opulence. They are regarded as the ultimate expression of love and devotion throughout the modern world, and as such they are in high demand. Men propose with them, women drool over them. They may be a girl’s best friend, but are they man’s worst enemy?
“Blood” diamonds are making their way back into the international market, despite attempts from the UN and EU to prevent this from happening. A “blood” diamond is a diamond that is used to finance a rebel army, and often their attacks on the legitimate government in that area. These “blood” diamonds are often linked to an assortment of human rights abuses ranging from raping, mutilating and killing women and children, to kidnapping children for the purpose of turning them into child soldiers. “Blood” diamonds are more prevalent in Africa than anywhere else in the world, where about two-thirds of the world’s diamonds originate. The civil wars in West Africa from the Cold War until today have almost solely been financed by the selling of these “blood” diamonds.
In 2003, the United Nations established the Kimberley Process of certifying diamonds to prevent “blood” diamonds from entering and being sold in the international market. It is designed to determine where a diamond originated in an attempt to assure consumers that the diamonds they want to purchase are not funding civil wars or contributing to human rights abuses.
As of April 2007, due to the Kimberley Process, 99 percent of the rough diamonds worldwide were considered to originate from conflict free sources. Recently however, new concerns over the effectiveness of the Kimberley Process have sprung up and we have seen an increase in cases of “blood” diamonds being distributed worldwide. A citizen of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jean Tshimaga, avoided the Kimberley Process and was caught trying to sell “blood” diamonds to a trader in Surat, India. Similarly, in April of 2011, two men were caught attempting to smuggle around 48,000 carats of “blood” diamonds from Zimbabwe to Mumbai, bypassing the Kimberley Process.# This raises the question: how accurate is the 99 percent statistic? Are 99 percent of the world’s diamonds really from conflict free zones?
Alternatives International for more
(Thanks to Feroz Mehdi)