Conflict or blood diamonds fuel conflict, civil wars and human rights abuses. They have been responsible for funding recent conflicts in Africa which resulted in the death and displacement of millions of people. During these conflicts, profits from the illegal trade in diamonds, worth billions of dollars, were used by warlords and rebels to buy arms.
An estimated 3.7 million people have died in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, and Sierra Leone in conflicts fuelled by diamonds.
While the wars in Angola and Sierra Leone are now over and fighting in the DRC has decreased, the problem of conflict diamonds hasn't gone away.
Despite the fact that an international diamond certification scheme called the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme was launched in 2003, conflict diamonds from Côte d'Ivoire are finding their way through Ghana into the legitimate diamond market. As the brutal conflict in Sierra Leone has shown, even a small amount of conflict diamonds can wreak enormous havoc in a country.
Between 1991 and 2002 over 50,000 people were killed, over 2 million displaced within the country or made refugees, and thousands mutilated, raped and tortured. Today, the country is still recovering from the consequences of the conflict.
The launch of the film Blood Diamond is a timely reminder that governments and the diamond industry must ensure that no conflict diamonds find their way into the consumer market.
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