EVELYN LEOPOLD, United Nations | Saturday
SOUTH Africa, the world’s largest diamond producer, has persuaded the 189-member UN General Assembly to call for a global certification system aimed at stamping out the gems-for-guns trade fuelling civil wars in Africa.
The resolution, adopted by consensus, asks members to give ”urgent” consideration to creating a ”simple and workable international certification scheme for rough diamonds.” A progress report is to be submitted within a year.
South Africa hopes the resolution is another step towards a global mandatory certification plan to ”monitor, regulate and control diamond transactions,” its ambassador, Dumisane Kumalo, told the assembly.
The non-binding measure was co-sponsored by Belgium, Botswana, Canada, Cyprus, Democratic Congo, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Britain and the United States. But India and Russia voiced misgivings that its own markets would be damaged.
Although so-called ”conflict diamonds” comprise only about four percent of the world’s trade in rough diamonds, they bring in enough money to keep rebels in such countries as Angola and Sierra Leone going for years, with many other nations involved in smuggling the gems and weapons.
The issue came to the fore at the United Nations in a controversial ”name and shame” report in March, commissioned by Canada in the Security Council, to check on violations of a diamond and arms ban against Angola’s UNITA rebel movement.
The preamble of the resolution speaks of diamonds exported from countries under military occupation, which French ambassador Jean-David Levitte took as applying to Rwanda and Uganda forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Appealing for clarity, he said, the Kimberley process had to deal not only with rebel movements but ”looting by foreign forces.” Congo’s diamonds are also used to pay Zimbabwean troops supporting the government, a move criticised by Britain as privatising the country’s devastating civil war.
India, a diamond cutting market, criticised the resolution, warning that its own relatively inexpensive gems might be jeopardised by tight regulations. – Reuters