Are you planning to buy a diamond ring for your wedding or do you want to gift your beloved with an exquisite diamond pendant? Before you dive into jewelry stores make sure you choose only conflict free diamonds. Modern jewelry companies would work with suppliers who provide high quality diamonds and stick to an absolutely no tolerance policy against any form of conflict diamonds. Any good company like A Maggio does verify each diamond in its inventory to make sure that all the stones are mined and treated in a socially and environmentally conscious way.
What are conflict diamonds? Conflict diamonds or blood diamonds are those which are sold to fund civil war or armed rebellion. The profits obtained from the trade in such conflict diamonds, which amount to billions of dollars, were utilized by rebels and warlords to purchase arms at times of brutal wars in Sierra Leone, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. While the wars in Angola and Sierra Leone are now over, and fighting in the DRC has decreased, the problem of blood diamonds exist in areas like Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa and Liberia.
Apart from this, countless children, women and men in Sierra Leone and other countries are treated as slaves to mine diamonds. Inhuman and primitive methods are used like digging the gravel and mud along the river side with bare hands and separating the diamonds with hand-held sieves.
Today all the major diamond companies of the world adhere to the Kimberley Process, an initiative started in collaboration with the gemstone industry and the United Nations to completely free the market of diamonds that are conflict ridden. The final aim of the Kimberley Process calls for all diamond traders to follow a legitimate and stable process and agree with social and environmental regulations. In 2002, the UN decided to fall back on a system to stop the practice of trading diamond for doubtful methods. The Kimberley Process Certification chalks out the regulations that countries require to follow to ensure a diamond is shipped and mined in a humane way.
Diamonds mines are located all through the world, with the most important mines in Canada, Australia, Russia and Africa. Diamond mining offers employment to many people in those nations. The Kimberley Process has aided in increasing the economic development of poor nations by making steady the movement of legitimately acquired diamonds from those countries to the jewelry market.
So the next time you drool over diamonds and want them for yourself find out if they come with Kimberley Process certificate. If not you should stay away from them and opt for jewelers like A Maggio who offer conflict free diamonds. No one would ever want to sport a diamond which was a product of cruelty, inhumanity or bloodshed.
