Creating A World Of Certified Conflict Free Diamond

The US is the certified largest consumer of diamond in the world today. We use a vast quantity of diamond for industrial use in addition to the far more noticeable use of diamond in the jewelry trade. The diamond jewelry trade has continued to grow at a remarkable pace, as the internet has made the trade of diamond far easier than ever before. However, there has arisen at the end of the 20th century a certified issue with the diamond trade that has placed a dark cast on the diamond industry. This is the issue of the conflict diamond.

The conflict diamond issue refers to the trade of diamond that originates in a diamond producing nation that is conducting a certified war of some kind, whether civil, external or military aid to another nation, and is utilizing diamond to fund this war. The term “conflict diamond” was born and certified out of wars taking place in various African nations in the 1990s to the present day. Outsiders certified reports that said that the bloody conflicts occurring in certain African nations were being funded by the sale of diamond. The issue did not end there, however. It was certified that the diamond mines were being worked by forced labor.

The nations that have been certified as being complicit in the conflict diamond trade include Angola, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of Congo. Once certified by the UN as trading in what is now known as the conflict diamond trade, these countries were placed under various trade embargoes as well as closer scrutiny of any trade whatsoever. It was due in part to this effort by the UN that greater worldwide attention was brought to bear on the certified tragedy that was occurring due to the conflict diamond trade.

The diamond industry did not sit still and accept that there was to be a certified conflict diamond trade going on under its nose. Meeting in the city of Kimberley in South Africa in May of 2000, the major nations of the diamond trade agreed to conditions of diamond production that would ban any country that was not certified as being conflict diamond free. This new certification process came to be known as the Kimberley Process.

What the Kimberley Process did, in essence, was to create a new diamond industry organization to be known as the World Diamond Council. It was this council of diamond industry leaders that laid out a framework by which all countries that wanted to trade in diamonds needed to be certified by the council. In essence, the council demanded that if a nation wanted to have their diamond trade certified as conflict free, they would have to meet the council’s demands. Among the chief of these demands for being certified as trading in conflict free diamond was a demand for open trade transparency. This transparency has been designed to make it clear where the money from diamond sales came from and went to in regards to the internal and external spending of the nation in question.

The Kimberley Process is not a perfect solution to the issue of the conflict diamond trade. However, by creating a system by which a diamond producer must submit to the strictures of a larger diamond industry body or not be certified as conflict free, the Process has helped to create progress. At the current time there is still trade in diamond that has not been certified as being conflict free, but the amount of this diamond trade that has not been certified is going down with each passing year. With concerted efforts by the diamond trade, the UN, the overall worldwide community and the socially conscious consumer, it is hoped that the day when all diamond trade can be certified as conflict free is not far off.