A new scheme aimed at ending the ”blood diamond” trade will not stop the illicit commerce that fuels conflicts across Africa, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) said on Friday.
About 60 countries attending a three-day conference at Sun City in northern South Africa have agreed to what they call a voluntary peer review system.
This means their diamond production would be monitored by teams from other diamond-wealthy countries to ensure they comply with the requirements of the so-called Kimberley Process that aims to curb trade in ”blood diamonds”.
But organisations like rights group Amnesty International, the international charity ActionAid and the Amsterdam-based lobby group Fatal Transactions have criticised the move, saying the proposed scheme lacks independent scrutiny.
”This system will not stop the trade in conflict diamonds,” which over the past decade has helped fund conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, said Judith Sargentini of Fatal Transactions.
”The NGOs with several countries and the World Diamond Council proposed a system of regular monitoring that could have covered all participating countries within four years.”
”The NGOs were disappointed that this was not adopted,” she said on Friday at the end of the three-day meeting.
A joint statement by Fatal Transactions, Amnesty and ActionAid recognised that some progress had been made but that were ”still no provisions for regular monitoring of all participants”.
Participants at the conference for their part described as a ”major step forward” for the proposed peer review system.
”Our major breakthrough that we have achieved at this plenary, one of the very critical issues that have been daunting us for quite a while, is the issue of monitoring,” outgoing Kimberley Process chairman Abbey Chikane told reporters.
”Although the process is voluntary, the plenary agreed that it would be desirable for the largest number of participants possible to volunteer to receive a review visit by 2006,” participants added in a final statement.
The Kimberley Process, named after a diamond-mining city in South Africa, aims to curb trade in so-called ”blood diamonds”.
These are defined as rough diamonds obtained by using or threatening to use coercion or military force and exploited by many rebel movements to finance their activities, mainly in mineral-rich Africa.
The system, which came into effect in February, is intended to determine a diamond’s origin when it passes through customs.
Any rough diamond entering or leaving a country taking part in the scheme would have to be transported in a sealed container and accompanied by a certificate of origin.
Several countries, including the DRC and its neighbour, the Republic of Congo, have said they will ”in principle” host review missions during the coming year.
The war in the DRC is believed to have cost the lives of around 2,5-million people, and a UN report found that the illegal diamond trade financed a steady supply of arms shipments for the fighting. – Sapa-AFP