Diamonds and Human Security
Africa is a continent with large natural resource endowments. These resources can be an effective catalyst of the continent’s development provided that they are managed in a sustainable manner and that the revenues generated from their exploitation are used to benefit Africa’s populations. Sadly, this has not been the case in most African nations and worse, natural resources have fuelled various conflicts. In the 1990s, conflict diamonds were used by rebel armies to pay for weapons in Angola, DRC, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, where they contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Recently, the plundering of minerals such as tin and coltan has fuelled conflict in the Kivus, in eastern DRC.
The Kimberley Process (KP), a UN mandated system, was initiated in 2000 in an effort to break the link between the trade in rough diamonds and armed conflict. The KP developed a certification regulatory mechanism, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), which came into effect in January 2003 and is currently adhered to by countries constituting 99% of the world diamond trade. The KPCS has rightly gained a reputation for being a successful peace and conflict prevention mechanism. As a tripartite arrangement, its success at bringing stakeholders together from the private sector, governments and civil society is perhaps unparalleled and has been widely noted and frequently referred to. As it gathers strength it is not without challenges, however, as greater controls and implementation of KP standards need continuous enforcement.
Partnership Africa Canada played a leadership role during the Kimberley Process negotiations and continues to be an active member of the Kimberley Process through its participation on various working groups and in plenary meetings. PAC is also part of a network of non-governmental organizations in Africa, Europe and North America which are working to end diamond-related conflict. In Africa, PAC works in collaboration with national NGO networks in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Liberia and Angola that are coordinating national education, research and advocacy programmes aimed at the creation of better management of and greater community benefit from the mining and natural resource extraction sectors.
