Sunday, 31. December 2006
blood diamonds
Fact #1: An estimated 5 million people have access to appropriate healthcare globally thanks to revenues from diamonds.
Fact #3: An estimated 10 million people globally are directly or indirectly supported by the diamond industry.
Fact #4: The diamond mining industry generates over 40% of Namibia's annual export earnings.
Fact #8: Approximately one million people are employed by the diamond industry in India.
Fact #9: Approximately $8.4 billion worth of diamonds (64 percent of the world‘s diamonds) a year come from African countries.
Fact #12: The revenue from diamonds is instrumental in the fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
This information comes from the World Diamond Council (WDC) website – http://www.diamondfacts.org/, an umbrella structure representing over fifty industry organizations from all over the world – the U.S., Russia, Israel, South Africa and Belgium with the historic diamond trading center in Antwerp, to name just a few. Having in mind that diamond supply and distribution is concentrated in the hands of a few key players, it is obvious that this network will make use of all means in order to make money from the diamond business. They have page-size advertisements in “The New York Times” where the above mentioned facts are used to prove how much benefit to the world and to its poor comes from diamond trade.
What might be interesting is that one of these organizations united under the WDC is “De Beers”, a Johannesburg-based corporation, which in the 1980s had a near monopoly (80 percent) on the world’s diamond trade and later was charged with antitrust violations for conspiring to fix prices for industrial diamonds.
But diamond industry might need more than such PR campaigns to recover their revenues after the release of Warner Bros movie “The Blood Diamond” (http://blooddiamondmovie.warnerbros.com/).
The term “blood diamonds” refers to conflict diamonds, which the UN defines as "...diamonds that originate from areas controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and internationally recognized governments, and are used to fund military action in opposition to those governments, or in contravention of the decisions of the Security Council." Although this issue attracted the attention of the world when during the civil war in Sierra Leone between 1991 and 2002 the rebels took over diamond mines, conflict diamonds have also been used to fund conflicts in Liberia, whose president Charles Taylor was accused by the UN of backing the insurgency in Sierra Leone, also Cote d'Ivoire, Angola, Congo and former Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. As Amnesty International reports, blood diamonds that have fueled wars across Africa led to the deaths of more than 4 million people and displacing many millions more. The extent of the problem becomes clear if one more fact is introduced – the most commercially viable diamond deposits in the world are nowhere else but in Africa and the same conflict-ridden countries are listed as the ones that have most of them.
According to the WDC, conflict diamonds have been reduced from approximately 4% to less than 1% since the implementation of the Kimberley Process on which, under the pressure from the UN to stop the flow of conflict diamonds, governments, NGOs and diamond industry agreed in 2003. Under this system, rough diamonds are sealed in tamper-resistant containers and accompanied by forgery resistant certificates with serial numbers each time they cross an international border. However, Liberia and Congo are not part of this process. And there are many more gaps in this system. For example, the borders in Africa are very porous and trafficking across them is persistent. When the blood diamonds enter states that are not technically defined as being at war, they become “clean”. According to Amnesty International and Global Witness, diamonds from rebel-held areas in the north of Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia or eastern DRC are smuggled into neighboring countries and exported as part of the legitimate diamond trade.
The WDC website, created to erase any suspicion of the consumers, confused about whether to buy wedding rings with the precious stones for the production of which people might have died, continues to write that today in Sierra Leone “diamonds represent a resource of crucial importance to the development of the country as it exported approximately $142 million worth of diamonds (approximately 3% of the world's diamonds) in 2005. Revenues from diamond exports are making a positive contribution to the rebuilding of its infrastructure, health services and education systems.” The language of blood, conflict, civil war is converted into the vocabulary of development. Following this logic, as Marilyn Monroe was singing in the 1953 film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, “diamonds are a girl’s best friend”… and buying them will even help the victims of famine and AIDS.
Not everyone knows more. It is a stunning fact but in 2006 Grammy Award for the Best Rap Song was awarded to Kanye West for the song “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6B8nlkUlb/), but only after making this song did the U.S. rapper find out about the issue of conflict diamonds and children mining them in West Africa. Global Witness, Amnesty International and the creators of the movie “Blood Diamond” are supporting a website “Blood Diamond Action” - http://www.blooddiamondaction.org/ - and some consumer guides have been written for those who still want to buy diamonds but, for the sake of good conscience, make sure that they are conflict-free.
The issue of diamond trade and its role in both violent conflicts and developmental processes is very complex, but needs to be addressed and even a Hollywood movie is instrumental in raising public awareness.
Fact #3: An estimated 10 million people globally are directly or indirectly supported by the diamond industry.
Fact #4: The diamond mining industry generates over 40% of Namibia's annual export earnings.
Fact #8: Approximately one million people are employed by the diamond industry in India.
Fact #9: Approximately $8.4 billion worth of diamonds (64 percent of the world‘s diamonds) a year come from African countries.
Fact #12: The revenue from diamonds is instrumental in the fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
This information comes from the World Diamond Council (WDC) website – http://www.diamondfacts.org/, an umbrella structure representing over fifty industry organizations from all over the world – the U.S., Russia, Israel, South Africa and Belgium with the historic diamond trading center in Antwerp, to name just a few. Having in mind that diamond supply and distribution is concentrated in the hands of a few key players, it is obvious that this network will make use of all means in order to make money from the diamond business. They have page-size advertisements in “The New York Times” where the above mentioned facts are used to prove how much benefit to the world and to its poor comes from diamond trade.
What might be interesting is that one of these organizations united under the WDC is “De Beers”, a Johannesburg-based corporation, which in the 1980s had a near monopoly (80 percent) on the world’s diamond trade and later was charged with antitrust violations for conspiring to fix prices for industrial diamonds.
But diamond industry might need more than such PR campaigns to recover their revenues after the release of Warner Bros movie “The Blood Diamond” (http://blooddiamondmovie.warnerbros.com/).
The term “blood diamonds” refers to conflict diamonds, which the UN defines as "...diamonds that originate from areas controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and internationally recognized governments, and are used to fund military action in opposition to those governments, or in contravention of the decisions of the Security Council." Although this issue attracted the attention of the world when during the civil war in Sierra Leone between 1991 and 2002 the rebels took over diamond mines, conflict diamonds have also been used to fund conflicts in Liberia, whose president Charles Taylor was accused by the UN of backing the insurgency in Sierra Leone, also Cote d'Ivoire, Angola, Congo and former Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. As Amnesty International reports, blood diamonds that have fueled wars across Africa led to the deaths of more than 4 million people and displacing many millions more. The extent of the problem becomes clear if one more fact is introduced – the most commercially viable diamond deposits in the world are nowhere else but in Africa and the same conflict-ridden countries are listed as the ones that have most of them.
According to the WDC, conflict diamonds have been reduced from approximately 4% to less than 1% since the implementation of the Kimberley Process on which, under the pressure from the UN to stop the flow of conflict diamonds, governments, NGOs and diamond industry agreed in 2003. Under this system, rough diamonds are sealed in tamper-resistant containers and accompanied by forgery resistant certificates with serial numbers each time they cross an international border. However, Liberia and Congo are not part of this process. And there are many more gaps in this system. For example, the borders in Africa are very porous and trafficking across them is persistent. When the blood diamonds enter states that are not technically defined as being at war, they become “clean”. According to Amnesty International and Global Witness, diamonds from rebel-held areas in the north of Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia or eastern DRC are smuggled into neighboring countries and exported as part of the legitimate diamond trade.
The WDC website, created to erase any suspicion of the consumers, confused about whether to buy wedding rings with the precious stones for the production of which people might have died, continues to write that today in Sierra Leone “diamonds represent a resource of crucial importance to the development of the country as it exported approximately $142 million worth of diamonds (approximately 3% of the world's diamonds) in 2005. Revenues from diamond exports are making a positive contribution to the rebuilding of its infrastructure, health services and education systems.” The language of blood, conflict, civil war is converted into the vocabulary of development. Following this logic, as Marilyn Monroe was singing in the 1953 film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, “diamonds are a girl’s best friend”… and buying them will even help the victims of famine and AIDS.
Not everyone knows more. It is a stunning fact but in 2006 Grammy Award for the Best Rap Song was awarded to Kanye West for the song “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6B8nlkUlb/), but only after making this song did the U.S. rapper find out about the issue of conflict diamonds and children mining them in West Africa. Global Witness, Amnesty International and the creators of the movie “Blood Diamond” are supporting a website “Blood Diamond Action” - http://www.blooddiamondaction.org/ - and some consumer guides have been written for those who still want to buy diamonds but, for the sake of good conscience, make sure that they are conflict-free.
The issue of diamond trade and its role in both violent conflicts and developmental processes is very complex, but needs to be addressed and even a Hollywood movie is instrumental in raising public awareness.
ieva jusionyte, 01:01h
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