Sierra Leone’s diamond trade may be banned in an attempt to cut off the cash flow financing the civil war
David Le Page
The United Nations Security Council this week took its most decisive step yet in stopping the trade in “conflict diamonds” when it announced plans to suspend all trade in gems from the war-torn West African state of Sierra Leone.
Diamonds have been a major source of revenue for the civil war waged by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) on its fellow citizens. Sierra Leone’s ambassador to the UN, Ibrahim Kamara, said that the Security Council has finally acknowledged that the war in his country is “cast in gemstones”.
All trade in Sierra Leonian diamonds has effectively been suspended, and the Freetown government will need to implement a working “certificate of origin” scheme before Sierra Leonian diamonds can again be sold. The RUF currently controls 90% of diamond-producing territory.
Liberia is the main conduit for Sierra Leonian diamonds, but the UN refrained from condemning that nation, as its leader, Charles Taylor, an RUF ally, is currently negotiating the release of 233 UN rebel-held hostages.
Diamond producers such as De Beers argue that a similar “chain of warranties” needs to be established globally to stop the trade in “blood diamonds”, estimated at an annual $255-million, or 4% of global production. Conflict diamonds are defined by general agreement to be those mined or stolen by rebel movements in opposition to legitimate governments.
A chain of warranties would require a worldwide scheme for producing certificates of origin.
De Beers itself stopped buying Angolan diamonds altogether in October last year, despite having already adhered to the certificate of origin scheme established by the Angolan government in response to a June 1998 UN resolution.
Tracey Peterson of De Beers said the diamond conglomerate’s Diamond Trading Company (part of the Central Selling Organisation) has stopped buying diamonds on the open market, and now sells only diamonds produced in South Africa, with its partners in Botswana, Namibia and Tanzania, and those purchased from Russian and Canadian producers.
“Any initiatives [to stop the trade in illicit diamonds] will be fully supported by De Beers,” said Peterson. She said that the UN initiative closely resembled suggestions made to the United States Congress by a De Beers representative last year.
The Belgian Diamond High Council (which is the self-regulatory authority of the diamond trade in Antwerp), the largest of the world’s 23 diamond bourses, announced measures to control trade in conflict diamonds 10 days ago, saying that any dealer who breaks the embargo will be blacklisted immediately across all 23 bourses. Indian and Israeli diamond industry representatives have made similar undertakings.
But at present Belgian customs officials do not have the power to refuse entry to diamonds of suspicious origin. No documentary proof of origin is required to import diamonds into Belgium.
Another problem is that it is difficult to reliably determine the origin of diamonds. Proposed schemes for tagging have been considered impractical, and the technology to use chemical analysis to determine origin is immature. Diamonds of origins as far separated as Australia and Africa can sometimes be very similar in chemical composition.
Even if such technology was available, difficulties would still crop up in cases where alluvial diamonds are mined both in rebel-held and government-controlled territories of a particular country, as such diamonds usually come from the same source.
Following the independent announcements from diamond-dealing countries, officials from the US, Britain, Israel and India met in London at the end of June for British- led talks on containing the international trade in conflict diamonds.
Britain also plans to seek further consensual measures against diamond smugglers at the July 21 to 23 meeting of the G8 industrial nations in Okinawa, Japan.
But the world’s desire for these often lethal gems has already fuelled an on-off civil war of exceptional savagery in Sierra Leone for nine years. The people of that country are unlikely to start celebrating the UN’s belated resolve until the RUF runs out of diamond-funded ammunition and machetes.