By all indications, and from the evidence gathered for this year's Diamonds and Human Security Annual Review, the Kimberley Process (KP), designed to halt and prevent the return of "conflict diamonds", is failing. The cost of a collapse would be disastrous for an industry that benefits so many countries, and for the millions of people in developing countries who depend, directly and indirectly on it. A criminalized diamond economy would re-emerge and conflict diamonds could

This report describes the role of diamonds in the Zimbabwean economy and their place in the country's increasingly repressive governance. It describes growing evidence of smuggling, the militarization of diamond resources and the killing of dozens of unarmed diamond diggers by the police and armed forces of Zimbabwe. The report describes the lacklustre role in all of this played by the Kimberley Process, the multilateral body designed to regulate the world's trade in rough diamonds, but whose members lack the initiative and the will required to investigate

Le commerce illicite des diamants bruts est l'une des plus grandes menaces auxquelles est confronté le Système de certification du Processus de Kimberley (PK) pour les diamants bruts. Le PK a été créé pour stopper et prévenir le commerce des diamants de guerre, qui a coûté la vie à un grand nombre de personnes au cours des deux dernières décennies. À la fin de la cinquième année du programme, le trafic des pierres illicites et des diamants de guerre ressemble davantage à la règle - une

The Heart of the Matter

Sierra Leone has just gone through a decade of brutal conflict in which tens of thousands of people were killed, almost all its limited infrastructure destroyed, and millions of its citizens displaced and brutalized in a systematic campaign of terror almost beyond belief. It is therefore necessary to take an accounting of this conflict, to try and understand why it happened, and, out of this cathartic process, to make sure it does not happen again. This is why Partnership Africa Canada

Part I: Monitoring and The Kimberley Process

Conflict diamonds have contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people over the past decade. They have fueled wars; they have led to massive civilian displacement and the destruction of entire countries. They have capitalized on the much larger traffic in illicit diamonds that are used for money laundering and tax evasion, or are simply stolen from their rightful owners. While conflict

By Christian Dietrich
The Study