Zimbabwe’s Blood Diamonds
Many critics have pointed to inherent structural problems within the KPCS that undermine its efficacy. Although the Kimberley Process did suspend exports from the Marange mines in June 2009, it agreed later that year to a joint working venture with the country; a phased withdrawal of Mugabe’s troops from the fields, and the presence of a KPCS monitor to certify that the diamonds were indeed ‘conflict free’. However despite no evidence of the army’s departure, and with continued reports of abuse, the President of the KPCS, Mathieu Yamba, declared in July this year that exports from Marange could resume. Civil liberty groups walked out of the meeting and the comments have also been heavily criticised by Human Rights Watch; ‘The KP desperately needed to reform to ban the sale of all blood diamonds, not just some (…) but the chairman chose profits over rights and might have ruined the KP in the process’.
The KPCS is also weighed down through its narrow definition of the term ‘blood diamonds’. Its charter designates blood diamonds as ‘rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments’. The definition is unfortunately both self-limiting and self-defeating; it is not entirely clear why blood diamonds mined under the control of rebel groups are considered more destructive than those mined under the authority of ‘legitimate’ governments. This clause provides no injunction preventing abuses committed by governments against their own people, and has indeed been used by some members of the KPCS to justify a resumption of mining, leaving the KPCS deadlocked over the situation in Zimbabwe.
More problematic still, is the nature of the KPCS per se; essentially working on the premise of voluntary self-regulation. Diamonds are tracked from their mine to their retail destination, and whilst this has provided some initiative for member countries to trade transparently with one another, it does not answer the requirements for an operational regulatory system equipped to prohibit illegal trade. Amnesty International has dismissed the voluntary system of warranties as; ‘more of a PR exercise than a credible system. It is not a robust and credible system that will combat conflict diamonds’. As the current crisis in Zimbabwe has stressed, blood diamonds are able to navigate beyond the frameworks of the KPCS and find their way into globalised markets through underground trade, undermining guarantees about the ethical sourcing of diamonds.
In the face of accumulating evidence of Zimbabwe’s trade in blood diamonds, the EU has this month taken the disappointing decision to overturn a ban, implemented since 2009, permitting the export of diamonds from the Marange fields. Although this decision was taken before the BBC’s Panorama documentary, it is nonetheless a discouraging response in the global fight against the world’s blood diamonds. Henry Bellingham MP, the Foreign Office minister for Africa, clarified that the exports are only permitted from parts of Marange that have met the minimum requirements under the KPCS, and that these parts are ‘subject to ongoing, rigorous monitoring’. The EU’s response sends a plainly inadequate message to the international community, and with the KPCS floundering under its structural problems and appearing progressively irrelevant, the global message on blood diamonds is incoherent, contradictory, and ineffective.
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