Between a rock and a hard place

Diamonds have been used by armed rebel groups in Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to pay for weapons and fund some of Africa’s most brutal wars. More than four million people have died as a result of these conflicts.

In 1998, Global Witness first exposed the role of diamonds in fuelling conflict with its report, A Rough Trade — the Role of Companies and Governments in the Angolan Conflict, which uncovered how the trade in diamonds helped to fund Angola’s civil war. Diamonds were the Angolan rebel group UNITA’s major source of revenue during the 1990s, and an estimated US$3.7bn worth of diamonds, around 60-70 per cent of Angola’s production, passed through their hands between 1992 and 1998. This enabled UNITA to re-arm and maintain supplies despite a UN sponsored peace process and an embargo on unofficial diamond exports from Angola.

A Rough Trade also revealed the diamond industry’s complicity in this problem, exposing how unscrupulous traders were buying up Angolan diamonds and trading them in Antwerp, the diamond capital of the world.  Global Witness campaigned for the international diamond industry to take the initiative to address the problem of conflict diamonds, and argued that De Beers in particular had the capacity to take a lead in urgently needed industry reforms. In the face of widespread death, destruction and misery resulting from diamond-fuelled conflicts, Global Witness launched an international civil society campaign that pressed governments and the diamond industry to take action.

International attention on the diamond industry only increased as evidence came to light of the diamond trade fuelling conflict in West Africa. In January 2000, the Canadian NGO ‘Partnership Africa Canada’ published The Heart of the Matter, a report  on the role of the diamond trade in funding conflict in Sierra Leone. It described how the Revolutionary United Front rebel force in Sierra Leone, supported by Liberian president Charles Taylor, fought for control over the key diamond mining areas, wreaking horrible brutality on the civilian population.

In response to international media attention and pressure from the civil society campaign, in May 2000 South Africa hosted the first meeting between governments, NGOs and the diamond industry. This initiative was mandated by a unanimous UN General Assembly resolution to give ‘urgent and careful consideration to devising effective and pragmatic measures to address the problem of conflict diamonds.’ Its remit was to define the essential elements of an international certification system for diamonds.

The launch of the Kimberley Process: January 2003

Over an eighteen-month period of meetings in Africa and Europe, involving 38 governments, diamond industry representatives and civil society, NGOs highlighted concerns that any certification system would not be credible without verification and monitoring measures. Several countries had already objected to proposals for independent verification of the scheme, whilst some sought special ‘opt out’ privileges and others promoted a parallel system for countries not wishing to join.

After two years of complex negotiation, the Kimberley Process was launched on January 1, 2003. When it came into force in the summer of 2003, the scheme was implemented by around 40 diamond-producing, -trading and -marketing countries, including the European Union and its then-15 member states.

The scheme requires governments to certify that all shipments of rough diamonds are free from conflict diamonds. Participating countries must pass legislation to enforce the Kimberley Process, and must set up control systems for the import and export of rough diamonds. Participants are only allowed to trade rough diamonds with other participants.

However, some key issues were not initially addressed in the scheme, including an oversight and verification mechanism, and the provision for adequate and independent analysis of statistical data. Civil society has had to continue to push hard for these to be developed in order to ensure the credibility of the system.

This resulted in a voluntary system of self-regulation parallel to the Kimberley Process, because governments refused to take proper responsibility for the oversight of their own industries. Independent monitoring neither takes place nor is required to verify industry compliance with such measures. This self-regulation will remain inadequate as long as it is not backed up by independent monitoring and government oversight. The diamond industry has failed to live up to its promise to create an auditable tracking system to ensure that diamonds are conflict free.

Implementing and strengthening the Kimberley Process

The Kimberley Process is a multi-stakeholder initiative. Global Witness and other NGOs played a major role in negotiating and designing the scheme, and continue to carry out advocacy work to ensure the effective and sustainable implementation of the KP.

For example, we successfully lobbied for a monitoring system to be established to review how national diamond control systems work in practice and to put forward recommendations for addressing any weaknesses. At the meeting of the Kimberley Process plenary in 2004, a peer review system was adopted, signaling a major step forward in making the Kimberley Process more credible and providing a mechanism for improving all participants’ systems of control.

However, despite the progress made in the first few years of the KP’s existence and the international acclaim garnered by the scheme, the systems of internal controls put in place by governments to prevent the trade of conflict diamonds are still not strong enough to keep conflict diamonds out.

As a result, conflict diamonds continue to be certified in countries that are members of the Kimberley Process, legitimised by the very scheme that was designed to eradicate them. The UN reported this year that conflict diamonds from Côte d’Ivoire continue to be smuggled out of the country and into KP-certified trade.

The UN and other organisations have also highlighted how weak controls in international trading and manufacturing centres are allowing these diamonds to reach the high street.

The conflict diamond problem has forced the diamond industry and governments to change the way business is done, but the Kimberley Process still suffers from serious weaknesses. Governments have failed to adequately regulate all sectors of the diamond industry, from the mines to the polishing centres, and the diamond industry has not honoured its commitment to monitoring and self-regulation.

The Kimberley Process is the only safeguard we have against the scourge of diamond-funded wars, and we must make it strong enough that diamonds can never again fuel conflict.

Charmian Gooch is a Director and Co-founder of Global Witness.