Diamonds, a rebel's best friend

A rough diamond. Picture / Reuters

The global diamond trade is continuing to finance vicious civil wars in countries such as Ivory Coast and Liberia, despite international efforts to blacklist stones from regions at war.

Human rights campaigners warn, in the approach to Valentine's Day, that an international system of regulating the gem trade is being systematically bypassed.

As a result, millions of men, women and children are being killed, injured and made homeless.

According to an Amnesty International report released yesterday, "conflict diamonds" from Liberia are being smuggled into neighbouring countries for export, and stones from strife-torn Ivory Coast are finding their way on to the British and European markets.

In Liberia, a bitter eight-year civil war, which has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced more than one million, has been fuelled by the illegal trade. Diamonds from Ivory Coast are smuggled to Mali and sold on the international market to provide millions of dollars in revenue for rebel factions such as the Forces Nouvelles.

Amnesty and Global Witness are calling on the public to protest against the trade. Shoppers are being urged to ask sales staff at jewellers where their diamonds come from and whether the areas are conflict-free.

Under existing guidelines, retailers should be able to provide a copy of their company policy on conflict diamonds and a written guarantee from suppliers about the origin of the stones.

Sarah Green, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International, said this week: "We know that a lot of conflict diamonds are creeping into the system and many retailers are not bothering to make warranties available.

"When we carried out a street-level survey only 18 per cent of stores could provide a copy of their conflict diamond policy and 22 per cent admitted they had no policy at all."

In the past warlords in countries including Angola, Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone have used billions of dollars of profits from the sale of diamonds from the mines they control to buy arms and fund wars.

The illegal stones are smuggled out of conflict areas and into neighbouring countries where they are either sold on the black market or mixed with legitimate Kimberley-certified diamonds and passed off as being sourced elsewhere.

"Diamonds have provided funding for several brutal conflicts in Africa," says a report by Global Witness.

Four months ago a Global Witness investigation into the trade discovered that diamonds were being smuggled out of Ivory Coast by rebel agents to Mali and Guinea, where they were sold to international traders.

Hundreds of labourers are being forced to work in diamond pits in three villages - Seguela, Bobi and Diarabala - in the north of the country to extract up to 300,000 carats a year worth more than $36 million.

In addition, Global Witness claims international terrorist groups including al Qaeda have infiltrated diamond-trading networks to raise funds for their cause and launder huge amounts of money.

* * *

Since 2003, following a major campaign highlighting the consequences of the trade in "conflict diamonds", an international certification scheme called the Kimberley Process has been in place, which means a certificate, guaranteeing diamonds as conflict-free, should accompany all shipments of rough diamonds to and from participating countries.

In addition, all sectors of the diamond industry, including high-street retailers, have agreed to a voluntary system of warranties to ensure diamonds continue to be tracked right up to the point of sale.

- INDEPENDENT