The Price of “Diamonds are Forever” Too Often Misery for Africa
Precinct Reporter, News Feature, Dianne Anderson, Posted: Mar 18, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO – The Census Bureau estimates that some $2.4 billion worth of wedding and other rings were sold this time of the season of love last year, and with similar sales this year, diamonds were certainly every girl’s best friend over the Valentine’s Day holiday.
But for the people of Africa, diamonds bring death rather than happiness.
The deadly diamond trade has gone on for decades, in some cases, centuries, in the African countries of Angola, Sierra Leone, and Democratic Republic of Congo where diamonds are linked to widespread human rights abuse. Sometimes it happens at the hands of insurgent groups, who use diamonds to fuel atrocities, and sometimes it’s an unscrupulous quest for diamonds at the hands of governments.
But it’s not high fashion for the world’s most sought-after symbol of prestige that they’re after. It’s arms. “We look specifically at Sierra Leone, and the Revolutionary United Front, who started to take control of the diamond mines, and trade those diamonds for weapons for the insurgents. We’ve seen that throughout continents,” said Mona Cadena, field representative for Amnesty International in San Francisco. Cadena, an expert in international diamond exploitation, said the illicit diamond market is used in the same way as other resources, such as timber, or gold, are being exploited, with the end goal of buying weapons and planes to fuel oppression.
The fight for resources in Africa is certainly nothing new. A long history of unrest and uprisings connected with the sparkling stuff was mass-popularized last year in Kenya West’s song “Diamonds” about the widespread deadly human rights abuses of the region. While black market diamonds account for just a small percentage of overall diamond sales, it was still enough to get five million people killed during the 1990s, according to human rights organizations.
In all, an estimated 20 million people have been killed or uprooted from their homes over dirty diamonds, and other natural resources in war-torn regions of Africa. Children are often used to mine diamonds in inhumane conditions.
“Individuals inside the diamond mines often experience human rights abuses by actually doing the mining. They’re standing in knee-deep water for days at a time,” Cadena said. There are also the dangerous conditions of breathing, eating, and sleeping toxic fumes deep within the mines. Before considering color, clarity and carat, Amnesty International asks diamond consumers to check out “conflict free” diamonds. “When conflict diamonds are sold, that means the money doesn’t go back into the country, it goes directly to insurgents,” she said. “Countries around the world are losing tens of millions of dollars that could be put back into their own economies.”
The blood-drenched diamond trade means economic strength for many more governments within the resource-rich continent. It accounts for tens of millions of dollars impacting hundreds of thousands of people. In the Central African Republic alone, around 40 percent of the region’s export money comes from diamonds, she said.
For the past five years, the human rights organization Amnesty International has been working with several progressive groups and international jewelers to buy clean diamonds. Two years ago, the group worked with Congress to pass the Clean Diamond Act . That effort was initiated to enforce stricter control on diamonds to ensure that major worldwide cutting centers, like the one in Belgium, are buying diamonds that are certifiably clean.
Cadena’s work has been specifically geared toward diamond exploitation, and she noted that the United States accounts for 65 percent of the world’s diamond purchases. “Wal-Mart sells more diamonds than any other jeweler in this country,” she said. “They haven’t signed on to jewelers for clean diamonds. We have not worked with them directly.”
Amnesty International offers consumers a guide for consumers at http://www.amnestyusa.org/buyconflictfree, and Cadena said that while buying clean diamonds will not result in a ten percent discount, it’s worth its humanitarian weight in carats, and the additional saving of lives.
“What they can do is take the buyers guide and ask questions of their jewelers,” she said. “In our experience, jewelers are not trying to buy diamonds that are killing people on the backend.”
Photo by Human Rights Watch
Related Stories:
Blood Diamonds Still Enriching Jewelry Industry
Reporter Finds al Qaeda Links to Blood Diamonds
Cell Phone Metal Triggers Strife in Eastern Congo
African < NAM coverage
Page
1 of 1
|
