South Africa will host the next plenary session of the Kimberley Process, the worldwide body that regulates the trade and certification of rough diamonds, for the second time at the end of October.
The session will take place at Sun City from October 29 to 31 and will be attended by representatives from over 70 countries. South Africa becomes the first country to host two plenary sessions as an earlier one took place in April in Sandton, Johannesburg.
Items of discussion at the Sun City plenary session include the handing over of the chairmanship and appointment of a vice-chairman, monitoring and control mechanisms, compilation of trade statistics and improvement upon the successes of Kimberley Process to date.
“Since its inception, the Kimberley Process has continued to gather support from members of the international community, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and industry leaders. At this plenary, we hope to build on the successes of the Kimberley Process thus far, gain feedback from all of our representatives and move forward in our efforts to eradicate the illicit trade in rough diamonds,” said Jeremy Pedder, of the Kimberley Process interim secretariat.
“All those involved in the Kimberley Process know that this will be a difficult task, but given the level of commitment demonstrated by governments, NGOs, and the industry, we are confident that the Kimberley Process will continue to take significant strides in reaching this goal,” added Pedder.
The Kimberley Process was initiated in 2000 with the mandate to agree the essential elements of an international scheme of certification for rough diamonds.
The Kimberley Process was borne out of an African initiative and subsequent discussion at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly 55th session in November
2000 where a resolution was agreed on the role of diamonds in fuelling conflict.
This resolution had the intention of breaking the link between the illicit transaction of rough diamonds and armed conflict as a contribution to prevention and settlement of conflicts.
Immediately after this session a workshop took place in Namibia at which the world’s leading diamond exporting, processing and importing countries continued to consider the technical aspects pertaining to the envisaged international certification scheme for rough diamonds.
Subsequent meetings took place throughout 2001 in Kimberley, Pretoria, London, Brussels, Moscow, Twickenham, Gaberone and Angola.
During 2002 a report was tabled during the 56th Session of the UN General Assembly concerning “The role of diamonds in fuelling conflict”.
On 5 November 2002, in Interlaken, Switzerland, a Ministerial Kimberley Process meeting took place and decided that the certification scheme, which had been in progress since June 2002 in some countries, would be officially launched worldwide on 1 January 2003.
South Africa, as the world’s fourth largest producer of diamonds and the country with the best system for monitoring diamonds from mine to selling point, was chosen to chair the Kimberley Process on a world wide basis from the outset in 2001 and with Abbey Chikane in the position of chairman.
South Africa and Chikane were re-elected to the chair for 2003. The chair is expected to locate to another of the participants in 2004.
Although conflict diamonds only account for 4% of the world’s production and trade in rough diamonds, the impact of this 4% is so severe that there is a threat that world diamond trading centres could switch their purchasing patterns to exclude Africa in favour of Australia, Canada and Russia. – I-Net Bridge