Last week’s Kimberley Process meeting in Botswana rejected a petition from civil society and representatives from Ukraine, the European Union, Australia, Great Britain, Canada and the United States, which sought to broaden the definition of “blood diamonds”. , a wording that would include diamonds from or with the participation of Russia.
In the run-up to the meeting, various civil society groups lobbied, via a public statement, to place sanctions on Russia on the meeting’s agenda. However, as early as Monday, the 20th, it was announced by the management of the Kimberley Process that the proposal was rejected and that the topic could not even be discussed by the members.
The possibility of broadening the definition of “blood diamonds” to include state actors who use the stones to finance acts of aggression was also rejected. Russia, supported by Belarus, Mali, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Kyrgyzstan, naturally opposed civil society proposals in a body that takes decisions by consensus.
“It was a long debate and it took a lot of understanding and negotiation to adopt the final agenda and the Russia-Ukraine war issue was not included,” Botswana’s Jacob Thamage, current chairman of the Kimberley Process, told Reuters. This decision disappointed civil society representatives working with that international diamond certification body. “In fact, the committee’s silence on the crisis in Ukraine confirms that we are right to challenge the claim that conflict diamonds account for less than 1% of all diamonds in circulation,” said Michel Yoboué, coordinator of that civil society platform. .
“The fact that the Kimberley Process is unable to even discuss whether it should continue to certify Russian diamonds as conflict-free reaffirms what we have been denouncing for years: the internationally accepted definition of blood diamonds is not the most appropriate,” Yoboué said during his speech at the meeting, quoted by Reuters.
