Mining’s old guard needs strong medicine
A new report details subpar investor returns in the mining industry over the last decade, particularly big cap diversified companies which have not adapted to new realities.
Diamonds and gold sales continue to finance conflict in chaos-ridden Central African Republic, which has illegally exported an estimated 140,000 carats worth $24 million this year despite international efforts to clamp down on illicit trade.
While tensions appeared to have eased in the nation’s capital Bangui after several days of a standoff between former rebels and international peacekeepers, a United Nations panel is advising peace troops to step-up monitoring of the country’s main mining sites.
In report unveiled earlier this month, U.N. experts warned an export ban on raw gems from the African nation imposed last year is not working as expected, Reuters reported.
The chairperson of the Kimberley Process — a group of 81 nations, including all the major diamond producers, formed to prevent “blood diamonds” from funding conflict — has even put in a written request to the U.N. Security Council to alert neighbouring countries to the presence of renewed diamond contraband, Mining Weekly reports:
Cases of contraband have already been documented and diamond trafficking networks involved in the gradual resumption of artisanal mining activities identified.
A May report from the Enough Project showed the country’s diamonds were being sold mainly to traders in the Darfur region of Sudan, as well as Chad, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Previous studies also revealed that Central African blood diamonds may have also hit the United Arab Emirates, Belgium, India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Qatar markets.
Image: Screenshot from ViceNew documentary, via YouTube.
4 Comments
Wardiamonds
The Kimberley Process wans’t “formed to prevent blood diamonds” – it only bans “conflict diamonds” which are narrowly defined as rough diamonds used by rebel groups to fund violence against legitimate governmemts.
Blood diamonds are any diamonds that fund, or are associated with, human rights violations.
The failure of the KP to ban all blood diamonds means diamonds that fund rogue regimes, (in Israel and Zimbabwe) that are guilty of gross human rights violations, can legally enter the diamond market. Jewellers claim these blood diamonds are conflict-free.
Consumers can have no confidence in the ethical provenance of any diamonds as long as cut and polished blood diamonds are allowed evade all human rights regulations.
Gary
You probably need to list around another 50-70 countries in the world who are guilty of “gross human rights violations” if you want to be fair?
bobbygater
how bout mixing the blood diamonds with current production in some western countries? who gonna know?
Good, Bad and Ugly
All diamonds from the monopolists are ‘blood diamonds’. This was a scam by DeBeers to eliminate the competition – quite successfully too; even though the concept of not buying ‘blood diamonds’ is laudable.