The failing battle against blood diamonds
One of the leading architects of the international battle against “blood diamonds” has quit the global scheme that was supposed to solve the problem, calling it an inept and failing process.
Ian Smillie, a Canadian who led the campaign against the illegal diamond trade that was fuelling wars in Africa and elsewhere, says he is giving up on the Kimberley Process because it is “complacent and almost completely ineffectual.”
The process, he says, has failed to tackle the growing bloodshed that surround diamonds in countries such as Zimbabwe, where more than 200 people were reportedly killed by the military when it seized control of diamond fields last fall, and in Angola, where thousands of small-scale Congolese miners were beaten and expelled.
Mr. Smillie, who worked for 10 years on the blood-diamond issue and helped create the Kimberley Process, has written to the process members to announce his resignation and to blast it for its refusal to deal with Zimbabwe and other human-rights abuses.
“When regulators fail to regulate, the systems they were designed to protect collapse,” he warned in the letter. “Without a genuine wakeup call and the growth of some serious regulatory teeth, it leaves the industry exposed, vulnerable and perhaps, in the end, unworthy of protection.”
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Posted on January 16th, 2010 at 8:04 pm