Before Marilyn Monroe performed the famous song in the 1953 film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” diamonds were a girl’s best friend. The point of pride of love that we now associate with diamonds hasn’t always been the case, though.
There has been extensive civil strife in the history of blood diamonds, also referred to as conflict diamonds. For these jewels to be obtained, hundreds of lives were lost. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast are the countries where these conflict diamonds were first produced. In order to control the goods supplied to the general public, the United Nations and other organizations are striving to prevent the introduction of conflict diamonds into the global diamond trade.
A sizable pink diamond is followed along its journey in the film Blood Diamond. It was discovered by fishermen who were being used as slaves in a diamond mine in a conflict zone in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. Both the transformation and the obliteration of many lives were caused by one gem. There is a terrible past behind the tale of that stone. Although the blood diamond tale is fiction, it is based on actual events and therefore can help you understand how mineral wealth can enable the repression and mass killing of thousands of individuals. This occurrence is not brand-new. With ivory and gold, it has previously occurred in Africa.
Male, female, and kid forced labor is frequently used to mine blood diamonds. Additionally, the legitimate producers’ mining activities are attacked and robbed during shipment or seizure. These assaults might be on par with a sizable military campaign.
Instance of Kimberly
For commercial operations, we all required law and order. The “Kimberly Process”—a government certification process—was developed as a strategy for this system. Through this process, every country is guaranteed to attest that all rough diamond exports are the result of legal mining and sales activity and not a conflict of interest. The quantity of conflict diamonds entering international gem markets is thought to have greatly decreased as a result of the Kimberly Process. 81 states and a number of non-governmental organizations uphold the Kimberly Process at the moment. As of December 2006, only Liberia and Ivory Coast were still subject to Kimberly Process penalties. 99% of all diamonds, according to the World Diamond Council, are currently conflict-free.
