CALL FOR URGENT REFORMS TO KIMBERLEY PROCESS

| Monday June 10, 2013 00:00

The call came ahead of a Kimberley Process intercessional summit in Kimberley from Tuesday to Friday, the second time South Africa is hosting the event.Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu is expected to deliver the keynote address at the conference.Southern Africa Resource Watch director Claude Kabemba said most diamond-linked conflicts had been resolved, and the Kimberley Process now had to expand its mandate and monitor the entire diamond chain.

'The Kimberley Process has played an important role over the past decade in resolving conflicts linked to the diamond trade but there is no doubt that it has to be reformed,' he said.Kabemba said it still had an important role to play in fostering a cleaner trade, but only if some recommendations were implemented.The Kimberley Process was launched 10 years ago to address the trade in conflict diamonds and to ensure that diamond purchases were not financing violence by rebel movements seeking to undermine legitimate governments.It has 54 participants, representing 90 countries, and its members account for about 99.8 percent of the global production of rough diamonds.

A joint press statement by unions and civil groups including the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the Coalition for a Free Palestine, said the integrity of the Kimberley Process had been questioned since its formation.'The complete failure of the process, after a decade, to resolve basic questions that go to the heart of its ability to ensure a diamond supply free of 'blood diamonds' has all but destroyed any original promise it may have once had,' the statement said. 'Indeed, the Kimberley Process's legitimacy has been so compromised that even resource-extraction monitoring group Global Witness withdrew from the process in December 2011 and declared at the time: 'The fact is that most consumers still cannot be sure where their diamonds come from, or whether they are financing armed violence or abusive regimes....

'Ever more insular, the Kimberley Process has spent the past few years lurching from one shoddy compromise to the next in a manner that strips away its integrity and undermines its earlier achievements.'The groups involved said until the definition of a 'conflict diamond' was expanded, consumers worldwide could not be confident that the diamonds they bought were not making them complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity and illegal occupation.-(BusinessDay)