The global “blood diamond” watchdog will allow Zimbabwe to make limited sales from its Marange fields, but rights groups called Friday for strict monitoring to prevent new military abuses.
The Kimberley Process had blocked sales from the alluvial fields in eastern Zimbabwe after documenting forced labour and other abuses by the military.
A special monitor found that Zimbabwe had complied with minimum standards for human rights, even though an activist who documented the abuses was arrested.
“If this is a victory for anyone, it is a victory for the Kimberly Process,” said the group’s chairman Boaz Hirsch.
“The past several months have been difficult, but they have clearly demonstrated that not only does the Kimberley Process have teeth, it also is able to achieve results.”
Under the agreement reached Thursday in Saint Petersburg, Zimbabwe will be able by September to make two supervised sales from its stockpiles of diamonds produced in Marange.
During that period, Kimberley will make a review mission to Zimbabwe, while the special monitor for Zimbabwe will visit during the first week of September to certify the second sale.
Zimbabwe will have to persuade the review mission that its production is now above board in order to win permission for future sales.
“The ball is now in Zimbabwe’s court to make good on its promises and act to end one of the most egregious cases of diamond-related violence for many years,” Annie Dunnebacke of Global Witness said in a statement.
Global Witness, which monitors the exploitation of natural resources, is part of the Kimberley Process. Last month the group accused Zimbabwe’s political and military elites of using violence and their links to companies to exploit the diamond wealth.
“We fervently hope that the governments in the Kimberley Process will, for their part, hold Zimbabwe to its commitments in order to begin to restore the battered integrity of the scheme,” Dunneback said.
Zimbabwe’s case posed Kimberley’s toughest challenge in years.
Harare argued that the scheme was created to prevent diamonds from financing rebel movement against legitimate governments, which is not the case in Marange.
But others argued that the scheme could not certify diamonds produced by civilians, including children, forced into labour by the military.
Zimbabwe’s long-ruling President Robert Mugabe, who controls all the security forces, has threatened to pull out of Kimberley and sell diamonds on the black market if Kimberley failed to certify sales from Marange.
Finance Minister Tendai Biti has also urged Kimberley to allow the sales, saying Zimbabwe desperately needs the cash as its economy claws its way out of a decade of collapse.
“This is a welcome and positive move by the KP,” he told AFP on Friday.
But he also said that the Treasury could not account for any of the $30-million in Marange diamonds sold last year before the Kimberley ban took effect.
He has asked parliament to pass a new law regulating the diamond mining in Marange, where government has put two South African firms in charge of operations.
The Marange fields cover some 66 000 hectares but the gems were only discovered there in 2006, making them one of the few new sources of income for Zimbabwe. Mining is the country’s main foreign currency earner. –Sapa, AFP