Diamonds Aren’t Always a Girl’s Best Friend

By Natalie Boyle With the GA’s first committee focusing on conflict diamonds, we should probably be more educated about the issue than what the movies and cliches tell us. Conflict diamonds, also called blood, war, and dirty diamonds, are mined in areas controlled by groups in conflict with the legitimate government and then sold to finance insurgent activities. Cassiterite, coltan, and gold are also sold as alternatives to diamonds.While the money made from this illicit trade is often used to buy weapons that will be used against trained soldiers, those weapons are more often used against civilians. It is not uncommon in Sierra Leone and Angola to see men and women lacking limbs which have been cut off by machetes, nor is it unusual to find children as young as nine who have been recruited by insurgents to carry on this conflict and to mine these diamonds that are, essentially, the direct cause of the deaths of thousands of people. The problem of conflict diamonds is as much an issue of human rights violations as of disarmament.When the topic of conflict diamonds first came to the UN’s attention in 1998 during Angola’s civil war, blood diamonds made up 20% of the world’s diamond industry. Today, due to such advances as the introduction of the Kimberley Process Certification System (KPCS) and the International Certification System, that figure has now been reduced to 1%.While Sierra Leone with the RUF and Angola with UNITA are infamous for their use of conflict diamonds, the stones have also affected the conflicts in Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, and The Republic of the Congo. As a result, the UN Security Council has banned all diamond trading with Cote d’Ivoire, Angola, and Sierra Leone, although bans have been lifted from Liberia.An end to the trade in conflict diamonds is a vital step in ending civil unrest in African nations. As we all know, if you cut off a group’s funding, you essentially cut off the head of the snake. Recently there has been a flood of information on conflict diamonds and their effects on people: Leonardo di Caprio’s movie, Blood Diamond, the recent movement for ‘conflict-free’ diamonds, and Ishmael Beah’s Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, have captured people’s attention and created an uproar. So the next time you walk by Tiffany and Co., or some other diamond retailer, just remember that there is a 1% chance that the diamond you’re coveting cost someone his life.