Fighting diamond smuggling in Africa
Liberia lifts its six-year-old moratorium on the mining, sale, and export of diamonds on Monday.
By Tristan McConnell | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the July 30, 2007 edition
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Koidu, Sierra Leone; and London - The diamond pits of Sierra Leone haven't changed much since the war ended five years ago.
Spread across the muddy, cratered moonscapes, hundreds of hunched men still break their backs day after day sifting through wet gravel with crude shovels and sieves.
Last winter the Oscar-nominated movie 'Blood Diamond' cast Hollywood's bright lights on the brutality of a war that was funded by diamonds dug by hand out of these mud pits then exchanged for weapons and exported to Europe where they were cut, polished, packaged, and sold to consumers seeking a symbol of enduring love.
Since the diamond-fueled wars in Sierra Leone and neighboring Liberia have ended, the amount of diamonds coming from conflict zones has dropped from 15 percent during the mid-1990s to only 0.2 percent today. With the help of international organizations and donor nations, Sierra Leone has made great strides in regulating its diamond industry, and Liberia just announced that it will lift its six-year-old moratorium on the mining, sale, and export of diamonds on Monday.
But, despite the gains, shortcomings remain.
"Smuggling is still happening across West Africa and as a consumer you still can't be sure of what you're getting," says Annie Dunnebacke, a campaigner at the London-based advocacy group Global Witness.
In 2005, experts estimated that up to 20 percent of the country's diamond production was being smuggled.
Some dispute this figure but none deny that smuggling persists. "Smuggling is there but it is not organized like during the war," says Jonathan Shaka, a government mines official.
Last year, official exports of rough diamonds were worth $136 million, but as the war raged in 1999 the figure was a paltry $1.2 million, leading experts to estimate that rebels in control of the mines during the war were smuggling up to $125 million of diamonds a year.
Advances in regulating the trade
The biggest advance for regulating the diamond trade came in 2003 with the launch of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which was set up to ensure that the gems are not associated with conflict through a system of self-regulation and certificates by which the origin of any rough diamond can be proved.
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