Conflict Diamonds

People worry about “conflict diamonds” without always knowing what the term describes. It is worth being precise. A conflict diamond is not defined by where it was found or how it was cut, but by what it paid for — and the diamond community has spent two decades building the machinery to keep such stones out of the legitimate trade.

What they are

Conflict diamonds, also known as “blood” diamonds, are rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance armed conflicts aimed at undermining legitimate governments. — The Kimberley Process

The first time the United Nations named “conflict” diamonds and banned their purchase was in 1998, in Angola. Angola had been independent since 1975, but several factions refused to accept the government in place, and a civil war ran from 1974 to 2001. The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) sold an estimated US$3.72 billion worth of diamonds to fund its campaign. That same year, Global Witness — among the first organisations to expose the trade — released a report, A Rough Trade, revealing the role diamonds played in financing the rebels. It was the first real step toward stopping them.

Angola’s situation has since normalised, and its diamonds have been reintegrated into the international market. By the Kimberley Process figures for 2009, Angola ranked as the world’s fifth largest producer by volume and fourth by value.

The names that come to mind most readily, though, are Sierra Leone and Liberia. Liberia was torn by civil war from 1989 to 2001, and its president, Charles Taylor, was accused by the UN of arming and training the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) insurgency in neighbouring Sierra Leone in exchange for diamonds. In 2001 the UN sanctioned the Liberian diamond trade. Taylor was arrested in Nigeria in March 2009, attempting to cross into Cameroon, and was tried in The Hague for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Both Liberia and Sierra Leone have since regained peace and set about building legitimate, regulated mining industries; the UN lifted its sanctions, and Liberia is now a member of the Kimberley Process.

The questions that remain

The certification scheme that grew out of these wars — see The Kimberley Process — transformed the trade. It also laid bare how thinly the wider world understands the producing nations it leans upon. By design, though, the scheme answers a single question and no more: whether a diamond has paid for armed conflict.

Everything beyond that question is left untouched, and Zimbabwe shows where the boundary falls. The country is not at war; no insurgency is contesting its mines; it satisfies the scheme’s criteria, and it has put genuine work into developing its industry. And yet, in the Marange fields, state security forces have been documented turning brutal force on unlicensed diggers with no regard for the protections they are owed — and the certificate, valid as it is, has nothing to say about any of it. Conduct of this kind is hardly peculiar to diamonds; it shadows every sector that extracts raw materials from territories where labour, human-rights and environmental safeguards are thin. The diamond trade goes on looking for additional levers to pull, but the picture will only shift once industries are willing to act in concert.