Supply chain of "Blood Diamonds"

Hii, I am Nikitha akula going to continue my previous blog post about diamonds. This post will talk about the supply chain of  "blood diamonds" in Central African Republican. If you have watched Leonardo Di Caprio's "Blood Diamond" you will have an understanding of what  I am going to talk about. If you didn't watch it please go and watch it, it's an engaging political war thriller , that will give you and understanding of the scenario in CAR.

It’s been 15 years since the global effort to ban conflict diamonds began. But the industry is still tainted by conflict and misery.Africa, home to 65% of the world’s diamonds. In the past, precious stones mined in African war zones, often by forced labor, and used to fund armed rebel movements.Diamond mining even outside a conflict area can be brutal work, performed by low-paid, sometimes school-age miners. A large stone, maybe a carat, could earn these workers a $100 maybe. These diamonds are found on the banks of a small stream whose waters will eventually reach the Congo River, is at the center of one of the world’s most important sources of gem-­quality diamonds. Hundreds of miners die every year in tunnel collapses that are seldom reported because they happen so often.

In 2003 the diamond industry established the Kimberley Process, an international certification system designed to reassure consumers that the diamonds they bought were conflict-­free. But more than 10 years later, while the process did reduce the number of conflict diamonds on the market, it remains riddled with loopholes, unable to stop many diamonds mined in war zones or under other egregious circumstances from being sold in international markets.

The Kimberley Process was hailed as a major step toward ending diamond-­fueled conflict. Ian Smillie, one of the early architects of the process and an authority on conflict diamonds, estimates that only 5% to 10% of the world’s diamonds are traded illegally now compared with 25% before 2003, a huge boon for producing nations that have a better chance at earning an income off their natural resources.

But critics argue that the Kimberley Process doesn’t go far enough. Unfair labor practices and human-rights abuses don’t disqualify diamonds under the protocol, while the definition of conflict is so narrow as to exclude many instances of what consumers would, using common sense, think of as a conflict diamond. Conflict diamonds under the Kimberley Process are defined as gemstones sold to fund a rebel movement attempting to overthrow the state—and only that “Thousands had been killed, raped, injured and enslaved in Zimbabwe, and the Kimberley Process had no way to call those conflict diamonds because there were no rebels,” says Ian Smillie.

Experts estimates that 140,000 carats of ­diamonds—with a retail value of $24 ­million—have been smuggled out of the country since it was suspended in May 2013. The Enough Project, an organization dedicated to ending resource-based violence in Africa, estimated in a June report that armed groups raise $3.87 million to $5.8 million a year through the taxation of and illicit trade in diamonds. Many of those diamonds are likely being smuggled across the border to Congo, where they are given Kimberley Process certificates before being traded internationally. 

So the supply chain of these diamonds work like this, 100’s of men work for months, shovelling away 50 feet of rock and dirt to expose the diamond-­bearing gravel below. None are paid for the labor; they work only for the opportunity to find diamonds. Knee-deep in water pumped from the nearby river. One gives an excited shout, fishes out a sliver of diamond the size of a peppercorn and hands it to an overseer sitting in the shade of a striped umbrella. The overseer folds it into a piece of paper torn from a cigarette pack and puts it in his pocket. It’s worth maybe $10, he says. That find will be split between the owner of the mine site, who gets 70% of the value, and the 10 members of the sluicing team, who have been working since 9 a.m. and will continue until the sun sets around 6 p.m. If they are lucky, they will find two or three such slivers in a day.

The day’s findings will be collected and sold to an itinerant buyer. He in turn will sell his purchases up the chain to one of the more established agents, who will collate several packets before making the journey to Tshikapa. Diamond-industry experts like to say a packet of diamonds will change hands on average eight to 10 times between the country of export and its final destination. The reality is that diamonds from the mines outside Tshikapa are likely to change hands eight to 10 times before they even leave the province for the capital, Kinshasa, the only place where Congolese diamonds can be certified for export. ­

Given the near impossibility of tracing diamonds to their source in countries like Congo, where artisanal mining predominates, jewellers who want a more transparent supply chain usually buy from mining companies like De Beers or Rio Tinto, which control all aspects of the process from exploration to cutting and selling.The only way that the blood will finally be washed away from conflict diamonds is if there is a true fair-trade-certification process that allows conscientious consumers to buy Congo’s artisanal diamonds with peace of mind—just as they might a cup of coffee.