Diamonds

Kimberley Process
Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) is the process established in 2003 to prevent
"conflict diamonds" from entering the mainstream rough diamond market by United Nations General
Assembly Resolution 55/56 following recommendations in the Fowler Report.
Problems with the process,

While participation is encouraged by the United Nations, it is entirely voluntary. It lacks an independent
monitoring system, it becomes too easy for participating nations to opt-out of their own laws
prohibiting trade of blood diamonds. Participating countries create their own punishments for violations
of KPCS requirements and standards. Another critique of the KPCS is the lack of government control
over diamond mines. Arguably, increased security at mining sites would decrease the number of
unregistered, unlicensed or illegal miners, therefore preventing these diamonds from entering the
stream of commerce. 119 However, the efficiency of this structure assumes that those monitoring the
security efforts at the mines are not working under a corrupt regime, and are not corrupt themselves.
Security guards like those overseeing Zimbabwe’s Marange mining camps only perpetuate the trade
cycle of blood diamonds rather than prevent diamonds from entering the market.

Another concern with the KPCS is the ease at which a country could forge the certificates on which the
entire scheme relies.120 Many African nations have forged documents to procure arms—this history
may indicate the possibility that the same countries would be willing to falsify a KPCS certification
document if given a strong incentive.
$3.5 billion minimum in KP-certified diamonds from Angola and Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC) had been looted through KP-certified tax havens such as Dubai and Switzerland in
collaboration with self-regulating 'KP-approved' governments including Angola and certain
international banks. Now because Under-invoicing and other illicit manipulation of reported income
or tax avoidance were excluded from the definition of 'conflict diamond' used by the KP. This has
enabled a 99 percent clean diamond industry to exist largely because the real violence of the
industry is whitewashed, ignored, or excluded entirely from the framework—the criminal portion of
which continues to exist entirely on the periphery.