Press Release: Blood diamonds - time to plug the leaks
From tomorrow June 23 (until Thursday June 25) the annual intercessional meeting of the Kimberley Process will take place in Windhoek, Namibia. At the dawn of this meeting, Fatal Transactions has co-signed a press release warning that the Kimberley Process is potentially failing its objectives. The coalition of civil society groups has said that despite having all the tools in place, the scheme was failing to address effectively issues of non-compliance, smuggling, money laundering and human rights abuses in the world’s alluvial diamond fields.
The KPCS is a landmark scheme established in 2003 to prevent trade in conflict diamonds. However, in the press release various campaigners state that it is failing in its objectives in a number of countries. For example, in Zimbabwe there is clear evidence of government-led human rights abuse in diamond mining areas, as well as smuggling and weak internal controls and Lebanon is exporting significantly more gem-quality rough diamonds than it imports. The problem has been known for months, but the KP has been sluggish in its response. For more examples download the full press release below.
The signatories of the press release are repeating calls for action in terms of human rights, monitoring of the KPCS and statistics and the internal control mechanisms regarding cutting and polishing centres.
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