SIERRA LEONE: Diamonds fuelled conflict, report says
ABIDJAN, 12 January 2000 (IRIN) - Diamonds have
fuelled Sierra Leone's
armed conflict and its highly criminalised war
economy, say the authors of
a new study whose recommendations include the
long-term deployment of UN
peacekeepers in the country's main diamond-bearing
areas.
The report, titled 'The Heart of the Matter: Sierra
Leone Diamonds and
Human Security', was released on Wednesday. Published
by the Partnership
Africa Canada and jointly authored by Ian Smillie,
Lansana Gberie and
Ralph Hazleton, it is the product of research
conducted in and outside
Sierra Leone in February-December 1999.
It recommends that "special long-term UN security
forces" be deployed in
all major diamond areas in Sierra Leone, and that the
government ensure
transparency, high standards and rigorous probity in
its diamond
purchasing, valuation and oversight activities.
Donors should support current British government
efforts to rebuild Sierra
Leone's army and police force and a professional
diamond unit should be
created to anticipate and counteract criminal
activities, the reportrecommends.
Pointing out that the formal trading of half the rough
diamonds produced
in the world is structured around the Hoge Raad voor
Diamant (HRD) in
Antwerp, Belgium, the report argues that this
structure "has a
demonstrated attraction for new forms of organised
crime, and is implicit
in fuelling African wars".
By recording the origin of a diamond as the country
from which it was last
exported, the HRD makes it difficult to track diamond
movements and does
little to prevent large-scale diamond smuggling, it
says.
Liberia's average annual mining capacity is 100,000 to
150,000 carats, but
the HRD recorded Liberian imports into Belgium of more
than 31 million
carats between 1994 and 1998 - an average of over 6
million carats a year.
Cote d'Ivoire purportedly exported an average of more
than 1.5 million
carats to Belgium each year between 1995 and 1997,
even though Cote
d'Ivoire's small diamond mining industry was closed in
the mid-1980s, the
report said.
Conversely, exports recorded by the government of
Sierra Leone amounted to
a mere 8,500 carats in 1998, whereas the HRD
registered imports of 770,000
carats in that year.
The study recommends that the Belgian government take
full and direct
responsibility for the oversight of the Belgium
diamond industry and that
an enquiry be launched "with particular reference to
its lack of
transparency and questionable paper work and its
possible infiltration by
organised criminal elements".
The UN Security Council should place an embargo on all
diamonds said to
originate in Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire until an
international review is
made into the resource bases of these countries and
until exports fall in
line with that resource base, the report adds.
"Attention should also be given by the UN peacekeeping
force (in Sierra
Leone) to blocking or destabilising major smuggling
routes from Sierra
Leone into neighbouring countries," it says.
But the diamond industry should also accept its share
of the blame,
particularly De Beers which purchases by far the
majority of all diamonds
produced, and more or less sets the prices of rough
diamonds on the world
market, according to the report.
"If De Beers were to take a greater interest in
countries like Sierra
Leone, and if it were to stop purchasing large amounts
of diamonds from
countries with a negligible production base, much
could be done to end the
current high levels of theft and smuggling," the
report says.
It suggests that De Beers be encouraged and "given
every incentive" to
open a purchasing office in Freetown and close its
purchasing agencies in
Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire until diamonds exported from
these countries are
proven to be of local origin.
The report also notes that three Canadian companies,
Rex Diamond, AmCan
Minerals and Diamondworks became involved in diamond
mining in Sierra
Leone during the 1990s.
It recommends that Canadian stock exchanges, where a
high proportion of
the world's smaller mining companies are listed,
should do more to include
issues relating to corporate behaviour in war zones in
existing codes ofconduct.
[The report is available at http://www.web.net/pac/
][ENDS]
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Item: irin-english-2267
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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs 1999
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International Coordinating Secretariat
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"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -- Einstein
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