all that sparkles... would you believe?

In all honesty, I can't believe that something so simple and elegant as a diamond can be the root of such evil. Maybe I'm naive, but this whole conflict never occurred to me. I'm also not the kind of girl who has a lot of diamond jewelry laying around, despite the fact that my birthstone is diamond. I'm more of a collector of recycled metals and semi-precious stones. Do you know where do your diamonds come from?

In 1998, Global Witness released a report that exposed the role of diamonds in funding civil war in Angola.  Five years later, in 2003, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 55/56 introduced the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), with the aim of preventing ‘conflict diamonds’ from entering the mainstream market.

Throughout the world, the “Kimberley Process Certified” stamp of approval has been seen as a guarantee of a conflict-free past, offering consumers a standard with which to judge the ethical credentials of a diamond prior to purchase. However, in late 2011, Global Witness pulled out of KPCS, branding it “an accomplice to diamond laundering”. One of the key reasons for Global Witness’s departure has been activity around the Marange diamond fields in Zimbabwe over the past few years, where an explosion of diamond production has been accompanied by increased levels of violence and intimidation orchestrated by a corrupt political and military elite . Since this conflict does not involve warring rebel militias, the KPCS considers Zimbabwe diamonds to be conflict-free.

To educate a wider audience on the problems with the Kimberley process, Ingle & Rhode has created an infographic that explains to ethically minded consumers, in an easy to consume format, why simply having a Kimberley Process certified diamond is not enough.

 

(via Ingle & Rhode Ethical Diamonds).

“It is important that consumers are aware that Kimberley certification does not guarantee that a diamond is conflict-free. In order to know whether a diamond has been ethically produced you need to be able to trace it back to it source.” - Tim Ingle, Ingle & Rhode