Watchdog warns blood diamond trade continuing

UNITED NATIONS - A deadly trade in blood diamonds persists, three years after the launch of an initiative to prevent illicit gem sales from fuelling African wars, a watchdog group has said.

African governments and the diamond industry launched the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme in January 2003 to provide guarantees that participating nations were not dealing in diamonds financing local conflicts.

The scheme has helped stem the flow of blood diamonds but millions of dollars in illicit stones are still entering the world market, Global Witness said.

"The Kimberley Process has definitely improved the situation but there are serious loopholes," said Corinna Gilfillan, a spokeswoman for the London-based advocacy organisation that investigates the links between natural resource exploitation and conflicts.

"There is still a problem of diamonds fueling human rights abuses."

Under the scheme, participants exporting rough diamonds, diamonds that are straight from the ground and not yet cut, issue a certificate stating the stones are conflict-free.

To do that, participants or countries have to track the diamonds back to a mine or point of importation. Importing countries agree not to accept rough diamonds that have not been certified.

Gilfillan said African governments may have laws on paper to prevent the mining and sale of blood diamonds but they do not have adequate means of enforcement. And the diamond industry is not delivering on self-regulation, she said.

At the height of the wars funded by blood diamonds in the early 1990s, four to 14 per cent of the diamonds entering the world market were sourced to African countries mired in internal wars, said Tom Zoellner, author of "The Heartless Stone," a new book on blood diamonds.

Though that flow has slowed, two per cent to three per cent of the current US$11.7 billion ($18.6 billion) global trade in rough diamonds is still sourced to countries not technically at war but whose citizens live under similarly harsh and brutal conditions, Zoellner estimated.

One of the biggest problem areas is Ivory Coast, according to Gilfillan. A November report by a UN panel of experts found illegal diamond revenue was an important source of income for rebels in the north of the country.

It was "very likely" these diamonds were entering the certified trade by being sold by dealers in other countries participating in the Kimberly scheme, the watchdog group said.

The UN Security Council imposed an embargo on Ivory Coast diamond exports last December. But such embargoes are in place in a number of African countries and typically are poorly enforced, UN experts say.

"We simply don't know where the next diamond-related conflict might be fomented, and as it stands now, the controls on blood diamonds are lax and in need of tightening," said Zoellner. "This problem is not resolved."

- REUTERS