Archive for the Conflict-Free Diamonds category
Diamond Pendant Marks Dream of ‘Total Peace’
by Admin on September 28th, 2009
Online diamond retailer whiteflash.com along with the World Centers of Compassion for Children International (WCCCI) launched an initiative in Denver, Colorado, in which 100 percent of proceeds from conflict-free diamond pendant go to WCCCI.
The $4,400 Dreams of Africa(TM) diamond pendant will only be available from whiteflash.com
“Our Dreams of Africa are not for partial peace. They are for total peace,” said Debi Wexler, CEO of whiteflash.com. Wexler along with WCCCI’s founder Betty Williams are jointly working towards building safe and nurturing environments for children “who need a second chance in life. If we start teaching peace at the beginning of these young children’s education, we will help these children to shine like brilliant diamonds for the world.”
Specifically, the partners will focus upon helping children who have suffered from conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and other countries in Africa.
“We need consumers to understand that there is a huge difference between blood diamonds and conflict-free diamonds,” said Wexler. “Not all diamonds are ill-gotten. When diamond mining is undertaken in the correct manner, without child labor or government conflict, the profits build infrastructure and serve as a source of livelihood for hundreds of thousands of people. As a socially responsible design company in the diamond industry, we believe it is our duty to support children who have suffered under blood diamond conflicts and to create awareness in order to combat such illicit diamond trade.”
Wexler and Nobel Laureate Williams joined the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak out against global conflicts and increased military spending at the expense of human health and welfare.
Whiteflash.com and WCCCI will work to establish the first learning center, headquartered in Italy, which will provide scholarships for children from Sierra Leone and other locations across Africa, and to instill values of peace and understanding during these children’s early education. Italy’s government donated land to build the learning center.
Whiteflash Dreams Of Africa™ to Honor New Charity Partner
by Admin on September 28th, 2009
On Friday, September 15, twelve Nobel Peace Prize winners gathered in Denver, Colorado to voice their desire for the building of education and peace in impoverished and war-torn areas of the world. This was the largest-ever gathering of Nobel Laureates on US soil. Luminaries such as the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu attended to speak out against global conflicts and increased military spending at the expense of human health and welfare, especially children’s rights.
As a part of this momentous conference, Debi Wexler, CEO of the premier online diamond retailer Whiteflash.com, presented the new Dreams of Africa™ pendant to WCCCI founder Betty Williams, a 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner, to support the company’s commitment to providing safe havens and educational opportunities for children. Signifying the beginning of a charitable partnership between the two organizations, 100% of the sales proceeds of this $4,400 conflict-free diamond pendant necklace (available exclusively at www.whiteflash.com) will be donated to the WCCCI in the creation and support of learning centers to provide a second chance for children to be educated about peace.
“Our Dreams of Africa™ are not for partial peace. They are for total peace,” Wexler said. “Betty and I are aligned in our vision to build safe and nurturing environments for children who need a second chance in life. If we start teaching peace at the beginning of these young childrens’ education, we will help these children to shine like brilliant diamonds for the world.”
Specifically, Whiteflash.com will focus on efforts to help children who have suffered from conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia and other African countries. Conflict or “blood” diamonds are illicitly smuggled diamonds, the sales of which are used to finance wars against countries’ legitimate governments.
“We need consumers to understand that there is a huge difference between blood diamonds and conflict-free diamonds,” said Wexler. “Not all diamonds are ill-gotten. When diamond mining is undertaken in the correct manner, without child labor or government conflict, the profits build infrastructure and serve as a source of livelihood for hundreds of thousands of people. As a socially responsible design company in the diamond industry, we believe it is our duty to support children who have suffered under blood diamond conflicts and to create awareness in order to combat such illicit diamond trade.”
In coming months, Whiteflash.com and WCCCI will work to establish the first center for learning, headquartered in Italy, with the purpose of providing scholarships for children from Sierra Leone and other African countries, and to instill values of peace and understanding during these children’s’ early education. Land has already been donated by the Italian government to start these centers until hot spots of conflict stabilize in vulnerable areas of Africa.
Whiteflash.com and WCCCI will also work to develop a web site that features the Dreams of Africa™ pendant as well as information on the largely-successful United Nations resolution, the “Kimberly Process,” which uses rigorous tracking to ensure that illegal blood diamonds are not available for sale around the world.
Stars Shine with Whiteflash at Alzheimer’s Charity Gala
by Admin on September 28th, 2009
Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, daughter of film legend Rita Hayworth, is a brilliant star in the fight against the disease which took her mother. On November 14 she shined her brightest in diamond jewelry from Whiteflash at the annual Rita Hayworth Gala; the world’s most successful fund raising event for Alzheimer’s Disease research. Princess Yasmin wore the Whiteflash Mesh Bracelet featuring over 9 carats of Whiteflash ACA superideal sparklers in 9 dancing rows ($19,000). The ring was a 5 carat Whiteflash ACA Hearts & Arrows diamond in a platinum “Champaigne Pave” ($160,000).
Donna Dixon, wife of actor Dan Akroyd, looked splendid in a new “Whiteflash Signature W Necklace” and unique “Princess Whiteflash Earrings” sporting a pair of blinding 5 carat Princess-cut diamonds ($310,000). All told, Princess Yamin and Ms. Dixon will set the room ablaze in over a half-million dollars of Whiteflash diamond jewelry.
Whiteflash.com in association with the Mark Kearney Group also donated two “Dreams of Africa” diamond pendants to the Gala’s silent auction for a total of over $10,000. The Dreams of Africa program was launched in August: Whiteflash is donating 100 percent of profits from sales of a designer range of diamond jewelry and other merchandise to the victims of conflict diamonds in Africa. Whiteflash has partnered with Nobel Laureate Betty Williams’ charity, the WCCCI, to fund relief for children with no red tape or industry in the way. The company’s message to consumers: “As jewelry retailers and consumers we cannot change governments or politics, but we can turn diamonds into a gift for life.”
The 2006 Gala honored former Miss America and Alzheimer activist Phyllis George. Inspired by The Four Tops hit, the evening’s theme, “Reach out, I’ll be there,” featured a performance by Grammy Award winner Michael McDonald, and combined the music and magic of Motown with the renowned style and splendor of a Rita Hayworth Gala.
Since 1985, the Rita Hayworth Galas have raised more than $42 million for Alzheimer’s disease research and support programs.
About Whiteflash.com
Whiteflash.com is the first company in the U.S. to offer an exclusive brand of Hearts & Arrows diamond and bring the sheer beauty of “super ideal cut” to the Internet. Debi Wexler, a computer entrepreneur, founded Whiteflash.com in 1999 bringing an expansive selection of loose diamonds to the Internet, including an exclusive brand of Hearts & Arrows diamonds. Whiteflash ACA is unmatched in its brilliance, fire and sparkle and remains the only Hearts & Arrows diamond sold online with advertised standards and a “true patterning” guarantee. Whiteflash.com also offers original, handcrafted platinum and gold settings, diamond engagement rings and wedding bands and custom designed jewelry. For more information, log on to www.whiteflash.com or call 877.612.6770.
Illicit Diamond Trade Used by Hizballah and Others
by Admin on January 19th, 2009
The international community should speed up efforts to prevent terrorist groups from using the proceeds from illicit diamond trade to finance their activities and launder their funds, campaigners say.
A Nairobi-based African affairs analyst, Adan Mohamed, said it was “very likely” that groups like Hizballah still use the trade to raise additional revenue.
“Nothing much has happened in putting mechanisms in place to prevent diamond trade from being used to clean dirty cash or finance conflicts,” he said.
Investigations by researchers, human rights groups, the United Nations and media organizations have revealed how Hizballah exploited weakness in the international diamond trade monitoring systems to hide their assets and raise funds.
The illicit trade was mainly carried out in the West African nations of Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast, and further south in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The trade was allegedly facilitated in part by former Liberian President Charles Taylor, now facing war crimes charges in The Hague.
Taylor was the main sponsor of the notorious Sierra Leone rebel group the Revolutionary United Font (RUF), which controlled a significant segment of the country’s rich alluvial diamond mines.
The RUF waged a brutal five-year war against the Sierra Leone government in which it targeted non cooperative civilians and punished them by amputating their arms. Some RUF leaders are in the custody of the International Criminal Court.
The gems mined by RUF were shipped to Taylor’s Liberia for onward transmission to Hizballah, al-Qaeda and other illicit international buyers, according to published accounts.
The small but influential Lebanese community in West Africa, comprising mostly Shiites, was also found to be instrumental in facilitating the transfer of illicit diamonds to Hizballah.
A 2004 report in the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, a publication of the Middle East Forum and the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, said that although the U.S. authorities had been able to reduce the flow of Hizballah financing from networks in the U.S., “it appears that one lucrative source of Hizballah financing is still growing: the diamond trade in West Africa.”
Security information consultant group Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) said last month that Hizballah could finance new attacks on Israeli targets abroad using funds from a profitable “blood diamond” network in West Africa.
Another group that has in the past documented how Hizballah and al-Qaeda have used diamonds from West Africa to finance their terrorist activities is the international NGO, Global Witness.
In a new report, the group says efforts to monitor the international movement of diamonds have not been successful and more needs to be done.
Global Witness estimates that four percent of illegal diamonds get into the international market every year. The overall global diamond trade is worth over $60 billion and most of the retail sales are in the United States.
A project known as the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) was started in 2003 to monitor international diamond movement, in a bid to prevent the gems from being used to fund conflicts and fuel human rights abuses. Seventy countries have agreed to implement the plan so far.
Pamela Wexler, an attorney who authored the new report, said that although there was much to praise about the KPCS inaugural phase, it had not yet evolved into a fully credible check on the international movement of diamonds.
“Foremost are gaps in oversight, specifically of internal control systems in individual countries and of the peer review monitoring system overall.”
Another key weakness was inadequate checks on private industry by individual governments.
The KPCS requires governments to implement import/export control regimes and to adopt systems to oversee their private sectors, and so keep a documentary record of rough diamonds as they travel from the mine to their polished state.
Diamonds must be shipped in sealed containers and export agencies must certify that parcels are free from “conflict diamonds.”
Members also agree to prohibit entry of uncut stones arriving unsealed or without proper certification.
Diamonds aren’t forever
by Admin on January 19th, 2009
Sahr Amara is stooped low, knee-deep in a muddy river, in the fifth hour of his workday. As he has each day for the past week, the 18-year-old will earn a stipend of only 7 cents, enough to buy himself a bowl of porridge to see him through the day.
Yet he returns every morning to dig in the wilting heat on the edge of Koidu, a town in eastern Sierra Leone, hunting for the one thing he says could transform his life: a diamond. Since he is the oldest of six children - three others have died of diseases - much of his family’s future rests on his prospects.
“If I find a big diamond, I can afford to go to school, I can learn, and then I can help my family and even my village,” he says. So far the plan has proved elusive; he has found no gems during his first week of work. “It’s not easy,” he says. “I think it depends on God.”
Whether or not divine intervention leads Amara to a big find, his tale is anchored in a much more earthly economy: the $60-billion-a-year diamond industry, which has built its growth on dreams of love rather than of raw survival.
Koidu, whose diamonds have been mined since the 1930s, is thousands of miles away - and a galaxy removed - from the glittering displays in jewelry stores in New York, Tokyo and London. It is set in a country where the average man earns $220 a year and dies at 39. In the dwellings along Koidu’s dirt tracks, residents eat dinner by candlelight not because it is romantic but because there is no electricity in town, just as there are no telephone lines and little indoor plumbing.
In short, it is hard to imagine a starker contrast between Amara’s world and that of the people who might one day wear whatever diamond he finds, and they live in deep ignorance of each other. When asked what diamonds are used for, Amara draws a blank. “I only know they are valuable,” he says.
But after 130 years of diamond mining in Africa, that ignorance is unraveling fast as the two worlds collide over the image of diamonds. The conflict, which has rocked the industry in recent years, may reach fever pitch this month with the release of the movie “Blood Diamond.” Set in wartime Sierra Leone during the late 1990s, the film depicts a South African diamond smuggler, played by Leonardo DiCaprio diamond industry, trying to recover a rare pink stone from a local fisherman whom rebels have forced to dig in the diamond pits.
The story line - a mixture of villainy and heroism - is classic Hollywood. But its roots are fact: In the 1990s rebels in Sierra Leone and Liberia financed their carnage from diamonds plucked out of the rivers and traded for arms. During a decade of war about 50,000 people were killed, and thousands had their hands hacked off by rebels.
Months before it opened, the movie had garnered media attention, aided by a marketing blitz by Warner Bros. (owned by Time Warner (Charts), parent of Fortune’s publisher) and a $15 million counterattack by the World Diamond Council, an organization founded by more than 50 producers and dealers to end illegal diamond trading.
“We have been engaged in a massive educational campaign,” says Eli Izakhoff, chairman and CEO of the council, which is heavily financed by De Beers, the company that sources about 40 percent of the world’s diamonds, all of them from Africa. “This movie gives the industry a great story to tell.” The council’s message: More than 99 percent of diamonds are now from conflict-free sources, and millions of Africans have schooling and health care thanks to diamond revenues.
The movie is indeed a period piece: The civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia ended a few years ago. But the war over perceptions is just warming up. Many in the industry fear that as the end credits roll, moviegoers might glance down at their diamond rings and wonder under what circumstances the gems were dug. Unlike oil prospecting or coal mining - essentials for modern life - those questions could roil an industry whose lifeblood is ephemeral.
“Diamonds are essentially worth nothing,” says Mordechai Rapaport, whose Rapaport Group price list is the industry standard. It’s all about what they signify, he explains: In the case of a wedding ring, it’s the guy, not the one-carat diamond. By that logic, he adds, “when a guy gives a woman a diamond and someone was killed for it, it is not worth anything.”
Diamond producers and dealers did not need Hollywood to reach that conclusion. As war raged in the past decade, they realized that so-called blood diamonds carried a risk to their business that was far out of proportion to the tiny number of stones. Even during the bloodiest years no more than 15 percent of the world’s diamonds were controlled by rebels in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The vast majority of diamonds, then and now, come from deep-level mines run by well-ordered international corporations, including Koidu Holdings, Sierra Leone’s newest such operation, which opened in 2003 and exports $2.5 million in diamonds a month.
And although UN investigators recently found that rebels in the Ivory Coast had smuggled millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds onto the world market through Ghana, blood diamonds account for only 0.2 percent of today’s global supply.
But the industry’s problem is far trickier than percentages. Consumers cannot be sure which diamonds are blood diamonds. And therein lies the potential for a boycott, especially since synthetic diamonds now look close to the real thing. “Diamonds are a luxury, so we depend completely on the consumer’s faith,” says Rory More O’Ferrall, director of external affairs for De Beers. “Anything that affects the integrity of that we need to address.”
Tackling the problem took an unlikely alliance: Industry executives joined forces in 2003 with governments and the UN to end the trade of conflict diamonds. The resulting Kimberley Process Certification Scheme is a rare experiment by a major industry to monitor its own abuses. The 71 member countries agree to trade only among themselves. They inspect one another’s facilities, then issue certificates declaring their diamonds conflict-free.
In theory, rigorous paperwork tries to trace all diamonds from mines to consumers. Transgressors are ousted: The Republic of Congo was banned in 2004, and Venezuela was threatened with suspension last month after reporting zero diamond exports for 2005.
But the system is hardly flawless, even in the U.S. In September the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that Customs and Treasury officials were only haphazardly enforcing the system, leaving companies to monitor themselves. Last year about 300,000 more carats were exported from than imported to the U.S. - which produces no commercial diamonds itself. Representatives from all 71 countries met last month in Botswana to try to tighten loopholes and squeeze out nonmembers. “There are fewer and fewer countries left that nonmembers can trade with,” says Sue Saarnio, the U.S. State Department’s representative to the November conference.
A far grimmer assessment of the Kimberley Process can be found in the back alleys of Koidu. As the clammy heat eases off in the late afternoon, dozens of men converge on the neighborhood dubbed by the locals “Open Yei,” Creole for “keep your eyes open,” a reference to its thriving unlicensed diamond trading.
The action is the area’s major entertainment, drawing a crowd of curious men and children. In a dirt clearing between the small wooden storefronts, Abdollai Koroma runs his business from a chair under a shade tree, clutching a yellow calculator and a jeweler’s loupe in a weathered pouch. During just one hour eight men arrive with their wares wrapped in scraps of paper stuffed in their pockets. Koroma takes each stone and swirls it in his mouth before examining it briefly under the loupe. “This is 1.20 carats,” he says after spitting out a glittering stone the size of a shirt button.
Koroma, who started trading diamonds at age 17, taps on his calculator, peels off a wad of banknotes, and makes his biggest purchase of the day: 200,000 leones, about $66. The previous day the neighborhood trade was equally brisk, as men gathered to sell diamonds to Komba Fillefaboa, a 47-year-old trader who began digging when he was 12. Fillefaboa says he buys dozens of stones on an average afternoon.
“We buy piece by piece and then gather them into a parcel to sell to dealers,” he says. Once the parcel of diamonds is sold to a licensed dealer, illegally mined diamonds are easily mixed in.
Fillefaboa says he has no problem finding buyers, despite Sierra Leone’s strict licensing laws, which ban illegal diamond dealing. Licenses are regarded as too costly and laws too cumbersome. “We are all illegal here,” boasts the neighborhood’s chief, Sahr Sam. “If the monitors come, we scatter.”
In reality, government monitors rarely come to Open Yei. There are only 200 for the entire country, sharing ten motorcycles donated by the U.S. Agency for International Development. “At every level people say to us, ‘If you harass us, we will just smuggle the diamonds,’” says Dan Joe Hadji, a senior monitoring officer in Koidu. “So we allow people to move around and hope and pray that they find religion” -by obeying the law.
Diamond producers and dealers frequently tout Sierra Leone as a Kimberley Process success story, since its official exports soared from near zero in 1999 to about $142 million last year, suggesting that smuggling has plummeted. Not necessarily so: The official statistics cannot be proved, says Jan Ketelaar, mine manager of Koidu Holdings and a former diamond advisor to Sierra Leone’s President.
Worse, this year’s exports are likely to drop about 10 percent, suggesting that bigger diamonds are being smuggled illegally, says a Western ambassador in Freetown who sits on a high-level diamond committee of diplomats and aid organizations but asked not to be identified. Director of Mines Alimany Wurie admits smuggling is widespread - perhaps as much as one-third of all Sierra Leone’s diamonds.
Enforcement is nearly impossible. The frontier with Liberia, whose diamonds are banned from world trade, is just 30 miles from Koidu and riddled with old smuggling routes. Only three of the 36 border crossings into Guinea are guarded, says Hadji, and even those are left unmanned for a few days each month when border officials walk to town to collect their pay.
Yet the rampant smuggling, though illegal, does not kill. And with peace restored in West Africa, it is tempting to think of blood diamonds as little more than a dramatic movie plot. Those who have witnessed Africa’s bloodletting up close say it’s a mistake to relegate the issue to history, because history could repeat itself.
In any future conflict in the region, diamonds would be one of the surest ways with which to buy weapons. “Diamonds were very much the fuel for the war but not the root cause, and those root causes are still very much with us,” says the Western ambassador. “Corruption, unemployment, poverty - I could well imagine another blood-diamond scenario here.”
Faced with that stark possibility, diamond companies have begun trying to tackle the crippling poverty at the bottom of the industry, where, according to Global Witness, a British organization that has done extensive research on blood diamonds, about one million Africans earn pennies a day in the backbreaking and increasingly fruitless search for alluvial stones.
Flying low over Koidu in a twin-propeller plane shows how daunting that task is. Hundreds of men can be seen bent low in the rivers around Koidu. “They are working in absolutely horrific conditions in the hopes of striking it rich, but the majority never do,” says Susie Sanders, a Global Witness researcher.
Little of the region’s innate mineral wealth has filtered down to residents. “A billion dollars’ worth of diamonds have come out of Sierra Leone in the last several years, and there is no electricity or water wells,” says Rapaport, who toured the villages around Koidu last summer with his father, Martin, chairman of the Rapaport Group.
Shaken by the chasm between the diggers and the diamond buyers, the Rapaports are trying to start a Fair Trade association of producers along the lines of Starbucks (Charts), which buys coffee beans for a premium price from some growers, then sells them for more money to socially conscious coffee drinkers. Rapaport is predicting that the current controversy over diamonds will jolt consumers into asking retailers probing questions about the gems’ origins.
If so, they are unlikely to find much information: Two years ago a survey of 40 major American retailers by Amnesty International and Global Witness found that almost none had policies in place against blood diamonds.
Rapaport believes consumers would happily pay a little extra to ensure they are buying African diamonds mined for decent wages under humane conditions. “Our idea,” he says, “is that Tiffany (Charts) is going to wake up one morning and see that Cartier is selling fair-trade jewelry and say, ‘Oh, my God, we need to do that.’ They will change not from an ethical point of view but from greed.”
In Koidu a U.S.-funded program trains diggers in how to grade and value the diamonds they find as a way of avoiding being fleeced by local traders. Last year De Beers and two activist organizations founded the Diamond Development Initiative, an international organization to train diggers in safety and economic issues, and ultimately to try to persuade many to grow crops instead. De Beers has begun a similar pilot training project in Tanzania, which it says it will replicate elsewhere in Africa if it is successful.
But for 18-year-old Sahr Amara all those projects seem abstract. His parents grow crops in a village about 20 miles from Koidu and cannot afford to buy his schoolbooks or pay his yearly tuition of 35,000 leones ($11.66). “I would like to find a diamond so I can go back to school,” Amara says. “If I stay digging at this site for a long time and find nothing, maybe I will leave and try to find a job somewhere.” That would leave Africa’s 999,999 other diamond diggers still searching for a dream.
Blood Diamonds - Conflict Diamonds
by Admin on January 19th, 2009
What Are “Blood Diamonds?”
The movie, Blood Diamond, traces the path of a large pink diamond found in Sierra Leone in the 1990’s by a fisherman working as a slave in a rebel-controlled diamond mine. That diamond changed and ended many lives and the story of that stone carries a strong social message. The story is interesting fiction but it is based upon facts. The story can help you appreciate how a mineral resource can fuel the oppression and slaughter of thousands of people. This is not a first time phenomenon. It happened before in Africa with ivory and gold.
What Are “Blood Diamonds?”
Blood Diamonds, also known as “Conflict Diamonds” are stones that are produced in areas controlled by rebel forces that are opposed to internationally recognized governments. The rebels sell these diamonds, and the money is used to purchase arms or to fund their military actions. Blood Diamonds are often produced through the forced labor of men, women and children. They are also stolen during shipment or seized by attacking the mining operations of legitimate producers. These attacks can be on the scale of a large military operation. The stones are then smuggled into the international diamond trade and sold as legitimate gems. These diamonds are often the main source of funding for the rebels, however, arms merchants, smugglers and dishonest diamond traders enable their actions. Enormous amounts of money are at stake and bribes, threats, torture, and murder are modes of operation. This is why the term “blood diamonds” is used.
What is the “Kimberly Process?”
The flow of Conflict Diamonds has originated mainly from Sierra Leone, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Ivory Coast. The United Nations and other groups are working to block the entry of conflict diamonds into the worldwide diamond trade. Their approach has been to develop a government certification procedure known as the “Kimberly Process”. This procedure requires each nation to certify that all rough diamond exports are produced through legitimate mining and sales activity. All rough diamonds exported from these nations are to be accompanied by certificates. These certificates state that the diamonds were produced, sold and exported through legitimate channels. The certification process accounts for all rough diamonds, through every step of their movement, from mine to retail sale. Retail customers buying a cut diamond are encouraged to insist upon a sales receipt that documents that their diamond originated from a conflict free source.
“Conflict Free Diamonds”
Nations who agree to participate in the Kimberly process are not permitted to trade with nonmember Nations. The Kimberly Process is believed to have significantly reduced the number of Conflict Diamonds that are reaching international gem markets. Today 71 governments and several non-government organizations abide by the Kimberly Process. The only two nations which remain under Kimberly Process sanctions as of December, 2006 were Liberia and Ivory Coast. The World Diamond Council estimates that 99% of all diamonds are now conflict free.
Legitimate Diamond Trade
The legitimate diamond trade provides jobs for over 10 million workers and brings prosperity to areas where this activity occurs. Support of the Kimberly Process by all nations and consumers can convert slavery into jobs and smuggling into respected commerce. The efforts are working. Today, about 99% of all diamonds produced come from conflict free sources.
How To Tell If Your diamond engagement ring or diamond jewelry Is A Non Conflict Diamond.
by Admin on January 5th, 2009
You are looking for a diamond with a good cause. You’re a diamond lover. You’ve got countless pieces of jewelry studded with diamonds. You are looking to find an engagement ring with the right cause. You are one of those people who just can’t resist the glitter and brilliance that goes with a diamond. Then you learn about the existence of blood diamonds. Your world is suddenly turned upside down.
That may be a satiric narrative but the subject is dead serious. Blood diamonds are used to fund wars and other brutal activities in certain parts of the world. Diamonds sold in this illicit trade promote violence and kill people; you want to make sure that your own non conflict diamonds. .
Many sectors emphasize the difference between “clean” diamonds, often called non conflict diamonds and “blood diamonds”. Even the UN General Assembly was quick to point out that diamonds mined and sold legally help the economy and promote prosperity in certain parts of Africa. In a resolution made in December 2000, they were also emphatic in stating that the sale of blood diamonds only brings about pain and suffering. That is why restrictions and standards have been put in place to differentiate non conflict diamonds from the blood diamonds.
Non Conflict Diamond Detection Points
The useful question would then be: How do I know if a diamond is a conflict diamond or a conflict free diamond? For practical purposes, the answer would really be: “There is no absolute way you can tell, especially if the diamond has already been polished.” Difficult? Sure.
This is challenging if you want to know whether or not the diamond you already own is “tainted”. However, there are still some precautionary measures which are in place and which you can take in order to avoid purchasing a conflict diamond. First of all, the international community has established a system wherein a “Certificate of Origin” is required. There are known areas from where blood diamonds originate. With these certificates, you can have a way of knowing the origin of the diamond. Of course, certificates can and have been forged. Stricter measures and even stricter implementation is needed in order for this system to work efficiently.
In addition to “Certificate of Origin”, some countries have set up their own measures in order to ensure that blood diamonds are not released in their markets. Amnesty International advise is asking four questions when you are out shopping for diamonds. First, ask the salespeople how you can be sure that what they are selling are non conflict diamonds. Second, ask them if they know where their diamonds come from. Third, ask for the company policy on purchasing diamonds. Fourth, ask if they can show you a written guarantee from their suppliers. Most likely if they are unwilling to help you out with your questions, they might have something to hide. They might be unable to answer you simply because they themselves do not have assurances as to the nature of their goods. Additionally, the jewelry company may not have educated their sales people on what conflict diamonds are about. In such instances, Amnesty suggests that you go some place else.
These questions should give you assurances that you purchase only non conflict diamonds. Unless everyone from source to manufacturer educates and cooperates and there is international transparency, there are still chances that some blood diamonds may get through.
Is it ethical to buy diamonds?
by Admin on January 22nd, 2007
Some Jewelers have sought to bypass human rights concerns by selling only Canadian diamonds. But both the industry and campaigners say this could hurt some of the world’s poorest people. Only a single Canadian diamond manufacturer can actually prove that their diamonds are not conflict diamonds. The rest adhere to an “honor system” known as the Canadian Diamond Code of Conduct, but this is not a regulated system and the possibility of corruption exists as much as anywhere else in North America. Despite the Canadian companies using “conflict free” as an adopted national marketing slogan, there are very few safe guards to ensure that diamond rough polished in Canada has not been “smuggled” in from conflict zones. More
Conflict Diamonds Press Briefing
by Admin on January 15th, 2007
Sue Saarnio, Special Advisor for Conflict Diamonds; Cecilia Gardner, General
Counsel, U.S. Kimberley Process Authority
Foreign Press Center Briefing
Washington, DC; New York, New York
MODERATOR: Well, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Foreign Press Center. Today’s briefing will address the issue of conflict diamonds and how the United States and 70 other countries around the world are working via the Kimberley Process to monitor and control trade in rough diamonds.
