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TRADE: Blood Diamonds No Longer Congo-Brazzaville’s Best Friend

Michael Deibert

PARIS, Nov 30 2007 (IPS) - The announcement that the Republic of the Congo, or Congo-Brazzaville, has been readmitted to the Kimberley Process, which aims to stem the flow of conflict diamonds, marks a breakthrough.

Congo-Brazzaville was expelled from the-then year-old process in 2004 for exporting diamonds from its war-wracked neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and falsifying certificates of origin.

‘‘Congo-Brazzaville comes back now after a very serious domestic effort to put their house in order and to get their domestic systems to the level required,’’ Karel Kovanda, chairperson of the Kimberly Process secretariat, told IPS. ‘‘It was quite an emotional moment. We’re always happy to have new people (come on board the Kimberley Process).’’

Congo-Brazzaville’s fate is just the latest example of the enforcement procedure which gets its name from the South African city where one of the first meetings was held on stemming the flow of diamonds used by rebel armies or other groups to fund conflict.

Congo-Brazzaville, which gained its independence from France in 1960, saw a series of coups and assassinations from that time on, erupting into a full-scale civil war in 1997 when forces loyal to current President Denis Sassou Nguesso (who also ruled the country from 1979 to 1992) ousted President Pascal Lissouba with the support of the Angolan army.

The two-year conflict was estimated to have claimed at least 10,000 lives. A peace agreement signed by the Nguesso government with various rebel factions in March 2003 is still viewed as fragile.

Extending beyond the upheaval in Congo-Brazzaville, an even larger war in the immense DRC also raged, killing at least 3 million people and seeing a host of rebel armies attempting to profit from the country’s natural resources, along with armed forces from Angola, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Congo-Brazzaville’s exportation of diamonds in numbers far beyond its ability to produce was the first warning sign that something was amiss, officials with the Kimberly Process say.

Diamonds also served as a driving force in the funding of Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war which saw widespread atrocities committed by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

Smuggled diamonds from that country also fostered the long-running conflict in Liberia which, under President Charles Taylor, effectively served as the RUF’s patron state. Taylor is currently awaiting trial in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Now, the three part Kimberly Process aims to ensure that diamonds do not finance any entity seeking to overthrow a government recognized by the United Nations, that all diamond exports be accompanied by a Kimberley Process certificate proving origin, and that member states don’t act as third-party brokers for non-member states.

‘‘Countries must have a legal framework in place that uses necessary import and export controls and controls on issuance of certificates,’’ says Stephane Chardon, chairperson of the Kimberly Process working group responsible for re-admitting Congo. ‘‘You must be able to trace the diamonds from the mine to the export points.’’

For its part the United States’ Clean Diamond Trade Act, which was implemented in 2003, prohibits ‘‘the importation into, or exportation from, the United States of any rough diamond, from whatever source, that has not been controlled through the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme’’.

The European Union’s position on conflict diamonds, meanwhile, was articulated in a 2001 position paper which affirmed that the Union and its member states ‘‘shall support and contribute to the efforts of the international community to break the link between conflict diamonds and the financing of armed conflict’’.

The struggle against conflict diamonds is far from over, though, observers said.

Even though the guns have fallen silent in Côte d&#39Ivoire’s civil war, for example, the country remains split in half between a southern region controlled by forces loyal to the government of President Laurent Gbagbo and a northern and western one under the sway of the Forces Nouvelles (New Forces) rebel movement.

In October of this year, the United Nations Security Council renewed diamond sanctions against Cote d&#39Ivoire due to their concerns about the production and illicit export of the precious stones and asked that the Kimberley Process continued to communicate information to the body regarding the issue.

‘‘The process certainly restricts the trade in blood diamonds but it hasn’t totally eradicated it,’’ said Ayesha Kajee, programme director with the International Human Rights Exchange (IHRE) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. ‘‘But, in itself, this case is an indication that the Kimberley process has succeeded to some extent.’’