blog 3 - The bloody background behind the overrated rock

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Rough trade: Diamond industry still funding bloody conflicts in Africa

The diamond trade in Africa, particularly in Liberia, has intrigued me ever since I watched the movie "Blood Diamond". The movie revealed truths things that I previously never thought about. Diamonds are often thought of as a woman's best friend and they are considered luxuries. However, despite the fanfare surrounding diamonds, few realise the consequences of their materialism and the bloody truth behind the diamond industry.

Diamond is often regarded as the jewel of all jewels and everybody wants to own one. However, what most people fail to realise is that a good number of the diamonds that we wear in fact come off the backs of Africans who have been enslaved by their own countrymen and forced to dig for diamonds. And even fewer people realise that just by buying diamonds, many of them are actually helping to fund civil war in African countries.

Now, what exactly do I mean by this? Rebel groups in African countries such as Liberia and the Ivory Coast go around destroying villages atop diamond mines and capturing people in order to work these mines. The casualties as a result of this are numerous and the fatalities are truly saddening. The diamonds gathered from these mines are then either traded for weapons via diamond smugglers or are just sold to provide funds for the purchase of weapons. These rebel groups then obviously use these weapons in their fight against the government.

If the number of people killed when they ravage villages do not seem significant enough, I guess it wouldn't hurt to know that the civil wars fuelled by these cause a multitudinous number of deaths. In Liberia, a bitter eight-year civil war, which has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced more than a million, has been fuelled by the illegal diamond 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.

Fact is, the demand for diamonds from consumers is what's causing suppliers to get their uncut diamonds from such sources. And we, the developed countries, are the ones providing most of the demand. And one big problem in preventing the retail of diamonds originating from such countries is that most of the time, the diamonds are smuggled out of these countries, usually to border countries, where they are mixed with other 'clean' diamonds and from then on, nothing can be done about it.

At the moment, 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. And this is all that the retailers can do about it, as diamonds gotten from the supplier are already mixed up, if mixed up at all. However, how guaranteed is this guarantee? In my opinion, there is no way that the suppliers would let their conscience get in their way of making such a huge sum of money. After all, who is going to check on them? Since a good deal of the diamonds are from Africa anyway, who is going to certify which came from Liberia and which came from Mali?

The best way to stop all of these is of course for us consumers to stop buying diamonds altogether. However, I know that this is practically impossible. However, this is all we can do about it. International committees are also helpless as they too have no way of pinpointing the exact location from which each and every diamond came from. There is no way anyone they sent to monitor things will be effective as well in a war-torn state. Hence, the only parties probably capable of doing anything at all are the countries from which diamonds are smuggled from and smuggled into. They can prevent smuggling via stricter checks and tighter borders. However, in the war-torn, poverty-stricken and corrupt states of Africa, I'm afraid that even this is practically impossible. In fact, the governments of those states might even partake in this as I'm sure that they would also need weapons to combat the rebels.

Since the African states choose not to do anything, the international bodies are helpless, the retailers are always in the dark and the consumers are even more ignorant. Hence, it really seems that nothing can be done about it. The only ways that the bloody diamond industry can become a clean one is one, for consumers to stop buying diamonds and two, for the wars in the countries. Since option one seems totally out of the question at the moment, I guess we will just have to hope that the war will end soon and we can buy our diamonds without considering its past. (not that anybody does anyway)

But hopes are merely hopes and dreams are unreachable, so lets wait for a miracle instead. If you want to do you part, ask for certification of its origin when you are buying a diamond ring. It probably is useless, but at least it puts you at ease.