Blood Diamonds — The Truth That Only Few Talk About

Does the term blood diamonds sound familiar? Without a doubt, the words “Blood Diamonds” sound like something immoral and corrupt. However, there are only a few people who understand the scale and seriousness of this expression.

How can we get a better understanding of blood diamonds?

We will take a closer look at these topics:

• What are the conflict resources?
• Which resources are being mined for blood money the most?
• Diamonds, are they a blessing or a curse? — A hard question to answer for the people of Sierra Leone
• What is the Kimberley Process?
• Certified Diamond Coin is revolutionising the industry.

Let us start with the basics:

What are the conflict resources?

Global Policy forum has provided a solid definition for this term.

Conflict resources are natural resources whose systematic exploitation and trade in a context of conflict contribute to, benefit from or result in the commission of severe violations of human rights, violations of international humanitarian law or violations amounting to crimes under international law.

Although the definition is sound and precise, it cannot paint accurately the horrors and pain of the people who had to go through this experience.

So to put it simply,

conflict resources are resource mined or obtained in conflict zones and sold while there is still active conflict nearby. It is usually a civil war where local governments are fighting rebel forces for the resource-rich soil. As a result, people who are caught in the middle of this conflict are the ones who suffer the most. Often forced to work as slaves for various military factions and to mine these precious minerals.

Which resources are being mined for blood money?

Blood diamonds

Blood diamonds are what people have been speaking of the most. The most significant part of the diamonds originates from Africa.

The term Blood Diamond does not mean that this is a unique form of a diamond. If a comparison is made between two diamonds with similar qualities and clarity, there is no way to tell the difference between the two. It just means that one of them originates from a country tormented by war.

Gold

Gold’s properties make it one of the most coveted metals in the world.Not only can it be elegantly shaped and sculpted, but the yellow mineral also conducts electricity and does not tarnish.

Gold is a highly effective conductor that can send tiny currents and remain free of corrosion. A small amount of gold can be found in almost every electronic devices such as cell phones, computers and calculators.Electronic parts, manufactured of gold, are very reliable.

Tin

A large use for tin is in a corrosion-resistant tin plating of steel. Because of the low toxicity of chemical tin, tin-plated steel is widely used for food packaging such as tin cans.

Tantalum

Tantalum is one of the most critical metals that most people have not heard of. This metal is highly corrosion resistant and is used in nearly every electronic device. Its primary use today is in tantalum capacitors (batteries), in electronic devices such as mobile phones, DVD players, video game systems and computers.

With strong leadership and a stable system in place, any of these resources could mean prosperity and happiness for a country and its inhabitants.

The story of Sierra Leone is an excellent example that we still have a long way to go.

Diamonds, are they a blessing or a curse?

- A hard question to answer for the people of Sierra Leone

In 1961, Sierra Leone gained autonomy from Great Britain.

After gaining this independence, diamond smuggling becomes a political problem as well as an economic one.

In 1968, populist Siaka Stevens became prime minister, bringing the country to a one-party ruler. Stevens was the first person to unite the diamond mines to political control and to profit officially, and he supported illegal mining to gain political power.

By 1991, Sierra Leone had problems with a corrupt government, and illegal diamond trading was an open and attractive invitation for armed rebellion. On March 23, a civil war started when the Revolutionary United Front, also known as RUF, a group of 100 soldiers from Sierra Leone and Liberia, attacked east Sierra Leone.

RUF stated that the goal of these attacks was to overthrow the corrupt government of Sierra Leone and the wealthy elite of the nation, by establishing their control.

RUF murdered, intimidated, and even cut off the arms of people living and working in diamond communities until they were able to take control of the mines in the area. Then the group moved on to the next village to do more of the same, effectively terrorising the entirety of Sierra Leone, to the point that many people fled their homes in fear.

All in all, approximately 20,000 innocent people experienced bodily mutilation, 75,000 were murdered, and 2 million left Sierra Leone altogether.

Now we have an idea of how bad the life for the people was.

Let’s take a look at the diamond production and export chart.

Under Stevens’ jurisdiction, valid diamond trading fell from more than two million carats in 1970 to 595,000 carats in 1980 and 48,000 carats in 1988.

In comparison, here are some of the data from the Kimberley Process’ documentation:

This table shows Sierra Leone`s diamond production and export data from the last seven years in comparison to the data from the 70s, 80s and 90s. It’s easy to see the difference between the years and how drastic the fall of the official production numbers are over time.

This fall in official diamond production and exports is showing us how bad the situation with diamond smuggling was in the time of civil war.

But what else can this chart tell us?

This chart is telling us how the rebels were doing their business in war times. They still had to find a way how to get new resources and weapons to their troops.

So they bargained with the one thing they had.

Diamonds.

RUF did not do their deals in cash. Instead, they traded diamonds for weapons and supplies.

These diamonds then flooded in the open market and were mixed with other diamonds with clear records. In the 1990s situation was terrible, 15% of all diamonds in the world where blood diamonds. However, thanks to various support groups, people movements, activists and Kimberley Process these numbers have gone down to 1%.

This 1% figure comes from Kimberley Process records and lets us think that the Blood diamond problem has finally been solved.

But what is the Kimberley process exactly?

The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) is the process established in 2000 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. The process was set up “to ensure that diamond purchases were not financing violence by rebel movements and their allies seeking to undermine legitimate governments.’’

The effectiveness of the process has been brought into question by organisations such as Global Witness, which pulled out of the scheme on 5 December 2011, claiming it has failed in its purpose and did not provide markets with the assurance that the diamonds are not conflict diamonds.

Source: Wikipedia

There are organisations questioning the Kimberley Process.

And that’s understandable. In 2006, the UN and the US government published reports pointing out that almost 23 million dollars of blood diamonds from the Ivory Coast were smuggled into Kimberley Process nations. This is possible because the Kimberley Process relies on corrupt governments of diamond producing nations to verify and guarantee their diamonds are genuine.

However, no one has to listen to other companies. The Kimberley Process went out and said it themselves that they have flaws in their system.

One of the founders of the Kimberley Process Qian Smiley even resigned from the group not long ago citing its ineffectiveness.

What are the alternatives?

Various organisations have been looking for ways how to stop blood diamonds flooding in to open market.

And now there is a solution.

This technological innovation could test diamonds and tell with a 99.8 % accuracy where this diamond is coming from and whether or not it is a blood diamond.

So what is it called?

It is called Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy or LIBS in short.

LIBS spectra have been demonstrated as a rapid, accurate, and minimally destructive method to determine the source of origin for diamonds.

This method allows the laser to go through the diamond and correctly make an estimation once it has enough data collected from one mine. Since the diamonds that come from the same volcanic pipe have the same molecular structure, the artificial intelligence can put together congruences and draw its conclusions.

Certified Diamond Coin revolutionizing the industry.

Certified Diamond Coin’s (or CDiamond Coin) team is working on making the diamond trade as safe and trustworthy as possible. That’s why Certified Diamond Coin ’s database is constructed using blockchain technology.

The creation of a decentralised database will make it easier to share information about diamonds with anyone. Information about diamond includes whether the diamonds came from conflict regions. Whenever someone wants to check if a diamond is valid and whether or not the place of origin is correct, the information will be pulled from CDC`s database and compared with the date from LIBS scan.

LIBS technology can test the diamonds, and the accuracy can go up to 99.8%. It depends how many test runs have been done before. If previously there were made 30 tests on 30 diamonds from the same mine them the test results will come out with 97% accuracy. If the tests are made on 100 different diamonds from the same vein, then the percentage will reach 99.8%. It’s important to understand that success rates for LIBS statistical systems increase as the sample base grows.

In conclusion

The production of blood diamonds and conflict materials caused suffering for millions of people. It is a sad realisation that greed can push people in doing so many regretful things to one another.

But this experience also teaches us as a good lesson. A valuable lesson that we must not allow things like these ever to happen again. Making others suffer in severe conditions and slavery can never be justified by financial gains for the few.

Support our Project and let’s put an end to Blood Diamond trading once and for all.