Global Policy Forum

By Tamam Ahmed Jama

Illicit trade in diamonds has been central to the financing and fuelling of armed conflicts in Africa for many years. More than 40 countries and the European Union, representing its 15-member states, signed the Kimberley Process -- a certification regime that will regulate trade in rough diamonds -- in Interlaken, Switzerland, in November. The signing of the document followed more than two years of consultations and negotiations and was the culmination of the work of two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) -- Ottawa-based Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) working in Sierra Leone and London-based Global Witness working in Angola.

About four years ago, a group of Canadians, moved by the brutality of the civil war in Sierra Leone, formed a support group under the name of "The Working Group for Sierra Leone". During one of the group's meetings, a young man from Sierra Leone offered this advice: "You will never stop what is going on here until you get to the root cause, which is diamonds."

Flora MacDonald, a former Canadian foreign minister and the chairperson of PAC, said this advice pointed the group in the right direction. Rebel armies trying to overthrow governments have sought control over diamond areas to finance their war efforts by using the proceeds to purchase illegal arms.

"It was this connection between diamonds and the arms trade that we wanted to expose," MacDonald said. "[People knew about] the atrocities that were taking place in Sierra Leone, but no one really made the connection with diamonds until our first report was published."

For the past few years, PAC has been conducting extensive research on the link between conflict and the illicit trade in raw diamonds, primarily in Sierra Leone, but also in other countries in the region including the Democratic Republic of Congo. Published in January 2000, the group's first report generated a great deal of media interest. "It got immense coverage because no one had ever spoken out like this," MacDonald said.

The trade in illicit diamonds had reached such an absurd point that diamond exports in Sierra Leone -- which has reserves of the world's finest diamonds -- fell year after year in the 1990s until they dwindled to a mere trickle, from $30.2 million in 1994 to $1.2 million in 1999. Meanwhile, according to MacDonald, Liberia -- which produces no diamonds at all -- had come to export a towering amount of diamonds. Much of these so-called "blood diamonds" had been fomented by Liberian President Charles Taylor, who exploited the illicit trade to finance his campaigns to destabilise surrounding countries. Units of Taylor's army, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), went into neighbouring Sierra Leone where they terrorised entire villages through murder and mutilation. The RUF moved into destabilised villages and began mining. Taylor then traded the diamonds on the international market and used the proceeds for purchasing arms.

Lack of regulations in the diamond industry allowed this illicit trade to flourish for years, apparently with little notice and much less condemnation. All raw diamonds are transported in packages to the Diamond High Council in Antwerp, Belgium, where they are sorted and sold to diamond polishers. "They all go into the mix and there is no check on where they came from, who handled them or what they did with the proceeds," MacDonald said.

The diamond industry and a number of governments reacted very negatively to the initial reports of NGOs. Realising that if NGOs were to mobilise around the blood diamond issue, this might lead to a boycott that could damage legitimate trade in diamonds, industry players agreed to collaborate with NGOs and interested governments.

Many of the details of the Kimberley Process were hammered out last May at a meeting in Ottawa that involved diamond-producing countries and diamond industry players. The former are now expected to ensure that all outgoing rough diamonds be certified, while the latter are required to reject raw diamonds not bearing a proper certification stamp.

The illicit trade in diamonds hurts countries that depend on diamond exports for their development. Acutely aware of the immediate and long-term political and economic consequences of conflicts raging at its periphery, South Africa -- the regional powerhouse of southern Africa and one of the world's leading diamond producing countries -- has been at the forefront of discussions on the conflict diamond issue.

"We're motivated by the fact that the continued trade in illicit diamonds has a destabilising effect for the whole of Africa and we want to contain it," said Ghulam Hoosein Asmal, political counsellor to the South African Embassy in Cairo.

The Kimberley Process was symbolically launched in the diamond-rich region of South Africa whose name it bears. The country has been chairing the process since its inception two years ago and is expected to see it through its first year of implementation.

To support peace initiatives in conflict areas, the sources of finance for rebel movements must be cut off. "Once you cut those finances, [rebel groups] are forced to resort to negotiations rather than the barrel of the gun," Asmal said.

PAC and Global Witness received a joint nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in pressing governments and raising public awareness about the blood diamond issue.

"This has been an extraordinary effort simply because after arguing for years that NGOs have a major role to play, here is the living proof," MacDonald said. She does, however, acknowledge that the struggle to stamp out illicit trade in diamonds is anything but over. "It takes an awfully long time to turn an industry around, but it's been remarkably successful considering where we started four years ago," she said.

One of the apparent strengths of the process is that all the major players have bought into it, at least on paper. Most diamond-producing African countries as well as major diamond-processing countries such as Belgium, the United States and Israel have signed the Kimberley Process. Similarly, De Beers, an Anglo-American company that controls about 75 per cent of the world's raw diamond trade, said it "stopped" buying "outside" diamond. A large quantity of the company's diamonds comes from Angola, where the UNITA, the opposition group controlling diamond areas, exports diamonds and uses the proceeds to purchase illegal arms.

As the regulation regime for rough diamonds enters into force, it remains to be seen whether rhetoric will translate into reality. As things now stand, "public shaming" is the only enforcement mechanism for non-compliance with the provisions of the Kimberley Process.

At the end of the day, the conflict diamond issue might be settled through the choices of socially responsible consumers. "The greatest enforcement mechanism is moral obligation," Asmal said. "I mean, you wouldn't want to get diamonds soaked in blood."

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