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Council staunches Blood Diamond
David McKay
Posted: Wed, 22 Nov 2006

[miningmx.com] -- “IT came from the heart of the earth. The stone was so rare men would do anything to possess it. And all who touched it were left with blood on their hands.”

So intones the trailer to ‘Blood Diamond’, the Leonardo di Caprio film in which he plays a South African diamond mercenary, Danny Archer, seeking absolution following a life of smuggling.

Set against the diamond trading activities in Sierra Leone during the Nineties, the film has the world’s diamond industry on the alert again after years fighting the negative image cast by conflict diamonds, the sale of rough gems the proceeds of which have been used to finance civil unrest and human rights abuses.

Said Eli Izhakoff, chairman of the World Diamond Council: “We had to get our ducks in a row or it could have been very bad for us. I think we’ve done that.” Izhakoff said the council’s main concern was not to change what ‘Blood Diamond’ wanted to say, but rather to place its story in the correct context. But it’s also not lost on the council that with its December 8 US launch date, ‘Blood Diamond’ could upset Christmas sales of diamonds, normally a high volume period for the industry.

Interviewed by Miningmx, Izhakoff was speaking following an annual plenary meeting of the Kimberley Process in Botswana from November 6-9. The Kimberley Process, adopted in 2003, was essentially a response to the bad press the industry was receiving. Trade in conflict diamonds was always a relatively small part of total diamond sales. Now, however, the process of certifying all diamond trade has helped stem illegal trafficking yet further.

According to a finding in the Kimberley Process’s annual plenary, more than $37.6bn in rough diamond exports representing more than 500 million carats of rough diamonds in 2006 has been monitored. Roughly 59,000 certificates were issued.

The World Diamond Council estimates that less a percent of diamond trade is now conflict compared to about 4% in 1999. But problems do occur.

A key development at the plenary, for instance, was tackling UN reports that Ghana was being used as a conduit for diamonds mined in rebel-held territories in Cote d’Ivoire. “We didn’t want to ban Ghana outright,” said Izhakoff. “That would look very bad and they’d lose money.”
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Six months before it’s release, ‘Blood Diamond’ was still stirring up the industry. The World Diamond Council wrote to ‘Blood Diamond’ film director, Edward Zwick, asking him to insert in the film’s end legend a note that conflict diamond trade had been dramatically addressed.

Alex Yearsley, who’s efforts at Global Witness, a British pressure group, has done much to popularise conflict diamonds, says the diamond industry gets off lightly in the film. “If the real situation of diamond trade in Angola, for instance, had been expressed, then the industry would be in big trouble.”