The Kimberley Process

As a result of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, diamonds are among the most monitored and audited of any natural resource in the world. This system has proven to be an essential and effective tool in combating the scourge of conflict diamonds. — Eli Izhakoff, Chairman, World Diamond Council

Origins

Three events in close succession brought the matter to a head. The 1998 report A Rough Trade drew public attention to the stones that were funding war; the United Nations acknowledged the problem of conflict diamonds in the same year; and in 2000 the Fowler Report, the work of Canada’s ambassador to the UN, Robert Fowler, set out in plain terms how the trade was being abused. The weight of the three was enough to bring the southern African producing nations to the table: the UN gathered them at Kimberley in South Africa, with the aim of closing the conflict trade for good.

The diplomacy bore fruit quickly. A UN General Assembly resolution of December 2000 lent its support to a worldwide certification scheme for rough diamonds; two years on, in November 2002, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) was formally constituted; and from 2003 it began to govern the production and movement of rough across its membership.

How a country joins

Membership now extends across some 75 nations, with the member states of the European Union admitted collectively under a single seat, and sits alongside observer bodies such as the World Diamond Council, Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada. Admission begins with an application to the Chair of the Process; the Chair, working with the participation committee, weighs whether the candidate can satisfy the scheme’s baseline conditions before a seat is granted.

Those conditions ask a great deal more than a signature. Each participant is expected to:

• Enact the domestic laws and supervisory bodies through which the trade can be governed.
• Operate controls on export, on import and on the movement of rough within its borders.
• Open its books to the scheme, publishing statistical data and sharing it freely with the membership.

Read together, these obligations reach past the paperwork into the politics of a producing nation. Once a country sits inside the Process, the revenue drawn from its diamonds is steadied rather than plundered, and an industry that once paid for wars is turned instead towards the keeping of the peace. The candour the scheme demands has a second effect: a government that must lay its diamond accounts open can no longer spend that money in the dark, and is answerable, in the end, for what reaches its people. The harder cases prove the point. Côte d’Ivoire — the single instance of mines falling under rebel command — was ring-fenced by the Process, the United Nations and its own neighbours acting in concert; the Republic of Congo, which holds no mines of its own, was expelled for shipping out volumes of rough it could not begin to explain; and Venezuela chose in 2008 to suspend its own trade while staying in dialogue with the scheme.

The System of Warranties

The Kimberley Process certifies shipments of rough between governments — it does not certify individual jewellers. To carry the guarantee all the way to the buyer, the trade created the System of Warranties, adopted by every member, under which sellers and buyers of both rough and polished diamonds must make this statement on all invoices:

The diamonds herein invoiced have been purchased from legitimate sources not involved in funding conflict and in compliance with United Nations Resolutions. The undersigned hereby guarantees that these diamonds are conflict free, based on personal knowledge and/or written guarantees provided by the supplier of these diamonds.

A seller may only issue that warranty when it can be corroborated by warranty invoices received for their own purchases. By keeping records of both the warranties they give and the warranties they receive, every member of the trade can certify that their diamonds are conflict-free. Failure to follow these principles prompts investigation and can result in expulsion from the industry’s institutions. For the customer, the chain ends in a simple assurance: the diamond on the invoice can be traced to legitimate hands.