CONFLICT DIAMONDS

Hello friends. I know it's kind of weird to have two blogs...but I decided that my urge to post items of a social justice nature is a different "flava" from my usual rantings, funny stories and observations. SO, this little corner of the World Wide Web will be dedicated to social justice information, politics, and related rantings as well as kudos for people/organizations out there actually doing stuff to make the world more fair and more well, good. I also hope to figure out this new journal site and be able to post links, create action suggestions with links to send emails to decision makers, etc. on here. I promise to try to make it at least a little entertaining, but it will definitely have a different feel than my diaryland pages. My hope is that this will be simple enough and interesting enough that you can send people who may or may not care about stuff like this to this site to find info and consider various situations to get them onto such people's radar screens. You dig?

Anyway, WELCOME! I hope you find this helpful, interesting and informative. We'll start out by addressing some issues that you may or may not know about.

Today, we are going to discuss Conflict Diamonds.

To many people, diamonds symbolize Valentines Day, engagements, love, committment, etc. However, for many others, they mean conflict, unfairness, poverty and even death. In some African countries, the Congo or Sierre Leone for example, profits from the unregulated diamond trade are used to fund armed conflicts. Militias continue to grow because of that 2 carat solitaire you might be eyeing at Kay Jewelers or the one that sparkles so beautifully in the DeBeers Commercial that reminds us...a diamond is forever. As a result, tens of thousands of civilians have over the past years been killed or tortured and millions have been displaced because of conflicts over land that is diamond-rich.

Below is some info on a program called The Kimberley Process:

"In May 2000, Southern African diamond producing states met in Kimberley, South Africa, to come up with a way to stop the trade in conflict diamonds and to ensure consumers that the diamonds that they purchase have not contributed to violent conflict and human rights abuses in their countries of origin."

Please see www.kimberleyprocess.com for more info on how to purchase non-conflict diamonds. Diamonds occur naturally in Canada for example and so gems purchased from there (if certified) can be counted on to be "safe". It occurs to me however that only purchasing diamonds from Canada (any retailer should have country of origin info on all stones) may mean taking business away from legitimate African diamond miners, in an already struggling African economy.

As consumers, we can make an impact, by demanding details about diamonds that we buy. Demanding proof that a gem is conflict-free can send a powerful message to the industry that we will not support an industry or nation that looks the other way as individuals are killed and displaced over a shiny stone.

I think the bottom line is to recognise that there is a serios issue here to be aware of. Let's be thoughtful consumers instead of numb Americans, blind and deaf to the ugliness that our careless purchases can contribute to.