A conflict diamond (also called a blood diamond) is a diamond mined in a war zone and sold, usually clandestinely, in order to finance an insurgent or invading army's war efforts.
The United Nations has decried the sale of conflict diamonds, arguing that their trade finances armies in fighting against legitimate governments and perpetrating human rights abuses, and prolongs devastating wars. It points to the UNITA rebels in Angola and to the Revolutionary United Front rebels in Sierra Leone (who it states are financed by the government of Liberia, also through diamond sales) as purveyors of conflict diamonds.
The UN is attempting to implement certification procedures to decrease the number of illicit diamonds on the world market. The World Diamond Council adopted at Antwerp on July 19, 2000, a resolution to strengthen the diamond industry's ability to block sales of conflict diamonds.
In 2002 the UN approved the Kimberley Process scheme aimed at preventing conflict diamonds entering the market.
Countries such as Canada have used concerns about conflict diamonds to present domestically-produced diamonds as an ethical alternative which avoids the risk of unknowingly purchasing a blood diamond.
Other substances are sometimes sold the same way as conflict diamonds, such as coltan.
A large part of the plot of the 2002 James Bond film Die Another Day revolved around the smuggling of conflict diamonds. For many people, this was their first mainstream exposure to the term and the concept. The topic of conflict diamond was also the subject of an episode of Law & Order, "Soldier of Fortune."
External links
UN on conflict diamonds (http://www.un.org/peace/africa/Diamond.html)
Blooddiamonds got their start in 1992 in the bush war of Angola, where UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, seeking new ways to finance his army, looked to the country's vast diamond fields to extend the smuggling business that his rebel movement had pioneered in the 1970s and 1980s.
The blooddiamond issue took on greater significance, however, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, when media reports cited evidence that diamonds were used by terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda, as a means of transferring their wealth globally.
BloodDiamonds is the gripping tale of how the diamond smuggling works, how the rebel war has effectively destroyed Sierra Leone and its people, and how the policies of the diamond industry - institutionalized in the 1880s by the De Beers cartel - have allowed it to happen.
A blooddiamond (also called a conflict diamond or a wardiamond) is a diamond mined in a war zone and sold, usually clandestinely, in order to finance an insurgent or invading army's war efforts.
BloodDiamonds first came to the world's attention in the late 1990's, during the violent civil war in Sierra Leone.
Blooddiamonds were the main theme of the 2004 Australian/Nigerian film Death is a Diamond.
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