Seven Ways Canada Can Help Africa's Great Lakes Region

As international laws to prevent the trade of conflict diamonds continue to fail, what was once a symbol of love has come to represent war and death.

During the 1990s and into this decade, conflict diamonds fuelled wars that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Africans. The Kimberley Process (KP), based on strong compliance laws passed in 2003 by 75 different countries and jurisdictions, aimed to end that once and for all.

For a while it worked.

Then the KP decided to let Venezuela – where 100 per cent of the annual mining production is smuggled out – off the hook. Diamond smuggling, the very thing the KP was established to prevent, was condoned. Then Guinea recorded an unexplained 600 per cent increase in production during a time of civil unrest and military upheaval, and Lebanon re-exported more gem-quality diamonds than it imported – a kind of loaves and fishes miracle. When Zimbabwe abandoned the rule of law, enabled diamond smuggling, and shot down 200 artisanal diamond diggers, it seemed that the KP might wake up and do something.

As in the other cases, it did wake up and the emails flew. But Zimbabwe was allowed to continue exporting. Because among two or three fundamental flaws in the KP agreement, one stands out: all decisions require “consensus.” And in the KP, consensus means unanimity. If one country disagrees, a decision – for example to suspend Venezuela or Zimbabwe – will not go ahead. What this means is that national and regional political or commercial priorities can trump conflict prevention, human rights and simple garden variety common sense.

If the KP fails – and it is certainly failing right now – the likelihood of a return to the chaos, criminality and bloodshed of the 1990s is high. And African governments that hoped diamonds might become an engine of growth instead of a curse can kiss that idea goodbye.

NGOs, parts of the diamond industry and some governments, including Canada and the United States, have been working to change the status quo, and they may succeed in creating a “KP-Plus”, made up of a smaller number of like-minded governments that will adopt greater transparency, better monitoring and tough rules on human rights. By creating a higher standard for the diamonds they produce or process, they might gain a commercial advantage that would persuade others to shape up.

There is another approach, embodied in the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act in the United States. Buried in it is a requirement that importers of tungsten, columbite-tantalite (coltan), cassiterite, gold, and wolframite from the Democratic Republic of the Congo – mostly high-value metals used in telecommunications industries – must demonstrate that their product is “conflict free”. It doesn’t matter if the tungsten, for example, was smelted in China or Indonesia, there must be a clear chain of custody showing an absence of conflict in its origin. This has prompted a rush of new certification plans and pilots as companies and industry bodies scramble to meet the requirements. Suddenly, the voice of the consumer is being heard. Paul Dewar M.P. has proposed something similar for Canada.

This is what the diamond industry needs. If Russia wants to support Venezuela for political reasons, if South Africa continues to take a see-no-evil approach to Zimbabwe, then perhaps a consumer campaign – the thing Kimberley worked so hard to avoid – is what will make the difference. In fact a consumer campaign, the iceberg dodged by the diamond industry courtesy of the Kimberley Process, may be the only thing that will make wayward governments enforce the laws they have enacted. Gem diamonds are a symbol, and 70 per cent of them are bought in Europe and North America. If the KP cannot guarantee the bona fides of a Zimbabwean diamond or one from the Congo, a ban in North America and Europe would go a long way to waking them and their supporters up. And it might be useful to think about how to reach consumers in Japan, India and China as well.

This week, the Kimberley Process is holding its annual plenary meeting in Israel. If it keeps procrastinating on human rights and outliers like Venezuela and Zimbabwe, the time will soon come to start telling young couples that diamonds are not the symbol they want to seal a lifetime commitment based on love.