Conflict Diamonds - Advice From The Diamond Store.co.uk

If you have seen the movie then you have every right to worry about whether the diamonds you are buying are "Conflict Free".

At The Diamond Store all our Diamonds are CONFLICT FREE!

For those of you who haven't seen the film or would like to know a bit more about what they are read on.....

Diamonds which are sold to fund illegal operations by rebel, military or terrorist groups are called conflict diamonds. The countries most affected by the illegal smuggling of conflict diamonds are Sierra Leone, Angola, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In all these countries innocent citizens have been terrorised, mutilated and killed by groups in control of the local diamond trade.

In the year 2000 South African countries with a legitimate diamond trade began a campaign to track the origins of all rough diamonds in an attempt to halt the sales of stones from conflict areas. This regime resulted in the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) which is an international effort to rid the world of conflict diamonds.
» Learn more about the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme

As recently as three months prior to the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks in America on 9/11 Al Qaeda laundered millions of dollars by buying untraceable diamonds from the rebels. In a “war on terrorism” the United States and its allies froze more than $100 million worth of Al Qaeda assets worldwide, but the likely terrorists had an ace up their sleeve in the form of diamonds from Sierra Leone which offered wealth that can be easily and quickly sold and is virtually untraceable.

Global Exchange and Amnesty International have launched campaigns against conflict diamonds threatening to replace the image of a diamond sparkling on the graceful hand with that of the truncated stump of a child amputee's arm. There is even a rumour that one senior executive from a leading diamond company had a recurring nightmare where the tag line of a De Beers television commercial read “Amputation is Forever”.

Conflict diamonds can be distinguished from legitimate diamonds by a well structured certificate of origin ensuring that they are the only ones which reach the market.

Additional controls such as the standardization of the certificate among diamond exporting countries and legislation against those who fail to comply need to be introduced by Member States and the diamond industry for this system to work.

The media is quite rightly determined to bring this serious problem to everyone´s attention with the 2005 film “Lord of War” centering round the sale of arms to Liberia financed by conflict diamonds. Also a large part of the plot of the James Bond film “Die Another Day” concentrated on the smuggling of conflict diamonds.

The imminent release of a film called “Blood Diamonds” starring Leonardo di Caprio at the end of 2006 will give rise to further questions from prospective and existing diamond buyers who need to feel reassured by the jewellery trade that effective systems are in place to ensure the provenance of any diamonds purchased.