Venetia, Finsch and Kimberley mines are some of the top diamond mines in South Africa. Namdeb handles the land-based diamond mines while the offshore ones are managed by Debmarine Namibia. Profit margins have been reduced due to the additional costs of offshore operations. Value is boosted by 13 diamond cutting and manufacturing factories, owned by Namdeb Holdings, which provide about 15 per cent of diamond production.
In , Namibia produced a total volume of nearly 1. Attended by representatives from Member States, regional organizations, non-governmental organizations, the diamond industry and experts, the hearing revealed the direct link between the trade of conflict diamonds and the purchase of weaponry and other items used by rebel forces. Participants of the hearing discussed a plan to develop a stable, state-run diamond industry in Sierra Leone. The day following the hearing, the Secretary General of the UN established a Panel of Experts to help watch over the activities taking place in Sierra Leone and investigate any instances of trade embargo violations.
This included monitoring air traffic over West Africa to catch transgressors trying to smuggle the illicit diamonds out of the country. This panel was able to report to the UN Security Council on December 19, , with recommendations for how to strengthen the existing resolutions and embargos.
It was revealed that the all trade of conflict diamonds by the RUF had been conducted with the permission of and with involvement from the Government of Liberia. In fact Liberian government officials had been in full support of the RUF high command the whole time.
This led to the signing of Resolution in March of , which established a Security Council Sanctions Committee, re-implemented an arms embargo, and called for the Panel of Experts to continue to investigate for another 6 months.
The Liberian Government was also warned that if it did not comply with everything imposed by the resolution within two months, action would be taken by other Member States to take and measures necessary to stop the export of rough diamonds from Liberia, even if the diamonds had originated from Liberia in the first place. Only this way could the Security Council be sure that the RUF was not using Liberia as a middleman to transport conflict diamonds to the world market.
West Africa today, and a look into the future. Over the summer of , rebel forces brought the battle against Charles Taylor to the capital city of Monrovia, cutting off the government from the port and thus from its supply. Taylor was forced to take asylum in Nigeria, and finally stepped down from power on August Now that the war is over in Liberia, however, the country has been so firmly entrenched in the trade of conflict diamonds that it is doubtful that an enduring peace will last in the nation for some time.
After western peacekeeping forces brought the insurrections in Sierra Leone to an end in , there was hope that the Kimberly Process could finally be implemented and give rise to a new era of the legal exportation of diamonds.
However with a government that remains unstable, and a list of known loopholes in the rough diamond tracking process, there is still fear that problems may resurface. The goal now is to establish an infrastructure that could give the country some stability, and a chance to join the ranks of peaceful and prosperous African nations like Botswana.
Experts suggest that Sierra Leone could obtain better self-sufficiency in the world market through loans to buy mining machinery, the creation of mining cooperatives, and strict guidelines for diamond certification. In Angola, President dos Santos had to relinquish some of the regular democratic processes during the war with Savimbi. Now that Savimbi is no more and the UNITA has been reduced to a political party, however, there is some concern as to why dos Santos has not yet readopted democratic principles.
The country now has a humanitarian crisis on its hand as a result of the war, and such remnants of the war as mine fields still litter the country. With a new rebel group trying to gain the independence of the northern enclave of Cabinda, the country has yet to truly experience and enduring peace.
It may be a long time before we can enter a jewelry store and buy diamonds without thinking to ourselves, did someone die for me to have this diamond? We can only hope that the United Nations and African peacekeeping forces will continue to monitor the progress of such nations as Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Angola, and will intervene once again if blood should be shed.
Hopefully the United States, now bent on destroying the roots of terrorism, will see the necessity to take part in such future efforts as well. Banning Conflict Diamonds What exactly is a conflict diamond? The United Nations has defined the term conflict diamond as follows: Conflict diamonds are diamonds that originate from areas controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and internationally recognized governments, and are used to fund military action in opposition to those governments, or in contravention of the decisions of the Security Council.
A history of conflict diamonds in West Africa Sierra Leone Sierra Leone, originally a British Colony, mined diamonds legitimately and profitably until its Independence in On March 23, , a rebel group known Sierra Leone.
It was immediately apparent to the officials present that this, later known as the Niarchos diamond Visit a South African museum dedicated to the diamond industry. Great news, we've signed you up. Sorry, we weren't able to sign you up. Please check your details, and try again. Its agents set impossible quotas for production of rubber and ivory, killing or chopping off the hands of villagers who failed to meet them. The novelist Joseph Conrad called it "the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.
At independence in , several hundred thousand Portuguese residents, virtually the entire educated population, abandoned the country. Some took even their doorknobs with them. They left behind a place where almost no Angolans had any training in statecraft, business or agriculture.
Then for the better part of the last 50 years, the cold war and the white-minority governments of southern Africa injected cash and arms into regional wars.
The Central Intelligence Agency, for instance, supported Unita in the early 's and again in the late 's. The Marxist government of Angola received military assistance from the Soviet Union and up to 50, troops from Cuba.
When the C. Sierra Leone, a small country in West Africa, had a more benign colonial history under British rule. But since the 's, predators who smuggle diamonds have warped every aspect of the nation's economic and political life. The meddling of colonialists, superpowers and white governments all but stopped at the start of the 's, leaving diamonds, oil and other natural resources as the primary forage for rebels and governments.
In those countries where there was nothing to trade for weapons — as in Mozambique, where post-apartheid South Africa stopped financing rebellion and post-Communist Eastern Europe stopped financing the government — war simply fizzled out.
But Angola, Congo and Sierra Leone had plenty of diamonds left over to excite greed, fuel war and to buy favors. The United Nations report on the embargo against Unita described how Mr. Togo has denied it. In return, it said, Burkina Faso sent Mr. Savimbi three flights of diesel fuel. The government of Burkina Faso denies that. De Beers created its cartel years ago when the company's founder, Cecil Rhodes, realized that the sheer abundance of diamonds in southern Africa would make them virtually worthless.
By carefully manipulating scarcity, De Beers prospered as perhaps the most powerful cartel in the annals of modern commerce. The company's grip on the diamond market has slipped a bit from near-total dominance at mid-century, but it has continued to keep the price of gem-quality diamonds high by being both aggressive and flexible.
Through the years, it has sponged up periodic floods of diamonds from Russia, Australia and, until recently, across parts of war-ravaged Africa where it does not own all the mines.
0コメント