#954 What is a blood diamond?

What is a blood diamond? They are diamonds that are mined in a war zone and used to finance the war. They are called “blood diamonds” because of all the blood that is spilled getting them and all the blood that is spilled from the profits of selling them. They are also called conflict diamonds.

Diamonds are found in numerous places around the world. They are made of carbon that is turned into diamond under very high heat and pressure. The only place this can happen is in the mantle of the Earth, which is kept at about 1,000℃ by the Earth’s core. The rock in the mantle has lots of iron and carbon, and this is what we need to make diamond. The tremendous heat makes the carbon atoms form bonds with each other and stick together in chains. Once the carbon has formed chains, the weight of all the rock above them presses down and squashes the carbon chains. It takes about 60,000 kg per square cm of pressure to squash the chains, which luckily the Earth can provide. When the pressure is high enough, the chains form into rigid crystals that are extremely strong. These diamonds then lie buried in the Earth’s mantle until they are pushed to the surface by volcanic eruptions or the movement of the tectonic plates.

Over 130 million carats of diamonds are mined each year. About 30 countries have diamonds, but only about 10 of those have significant quantities. Russia, Botswana, Congo, Australia, and Canada produce about 100 million of those carats. Interestingly, the most valuable diamonds are produced in Namibia. Diamonds have been used as valuable commodities since about 400 BC in India. Modern diamond mining has its starts in the 1700s in Brazil. There was a gold rush and the people panning for gold also found some diamonds that they started to sell. Brazilian diamonds dominated the diamond market until 1867 when they were discovered in South Africa. The diamond trade began to grow from there.

So, what are blood diamonds and where do they come from? The idea of blood diamonds didn’t exist until the 1990s and was a reaction by the UN to a war that was happening in Sierra Leone. From the beginning of the diamond trade, diamond mines were operated by private companies. The De Beers company was, and still is, one of the largest producing companies in the world. Diamonds are very valuable and they can be sold very easily. This became a problem when armed groups realized that they could take control of the diamond trades in their countries and sell the diamonds to finance their wars.

The idea of blood diamonds began in Sierra Leone. It was a British colony and De Beers had control of all the diamonds in the country. The political elite realized that they could make money by smuggling the diamonds out before De Beers could get them and selling them for profit. They began to take more and more diamonds until De Beers gave up and left. The country was failing, and all of the diamond profits were kept in the hands of a few. In 1991, a rebel force called the Revolutionary United Front rose up to take control of the country. They said they were fighting for the people, but they were really fighting for the diamonds. They killed and mutilated hundreds of thousands of people. They managed to take control of diamond mines and the sale of these diamonds continued.

In the early 1990s, the UN passed a resolution banning the sale of conflict diamonds from Sierra Leone, and in 2001, it was signed into American law. America is the largest diamond market in the world, so this had a big impact. A meeting was held at Kimberly to decide what to do, and the Kimberley Process was set up. This was a way to track where diamonds come from and stop diamonds that are conflict diamonds. There were immediate results and the number of blood diamonds on the market dropped. However, they didn’t go away and it is estimated that about 10% of all diamonds are blood diamonds.

So, why can’t they be stopped? The first reason is that the Kimberly Process defines blood diamonds as gemstones sold to fund a rebel movement. This was true with the Sierra Leone civil war, but there are other examples where diamonds have been seized and stolen by the armies of that country, which means they are not rebels and therefore the diamonds are not blood diamonds. Zimbabwe is a good example. The Zimbabwean army killed thousands of people when they seized a diamond deposit and those cannot be called conflict diamonds.

The second reason is that it is very easy to smuggle diamonds out of one area and have them “found” in another. The Kimberley Process gives all diamonds a passport which shows where it was mined. The Central African Republic is banned from selling its diamonds because they were used to fund an internal war that has killed thousands. They get around this by smuggling their diamonds over the border into Congo, where they can be mixed in with diamonds that are actually mined there and get a passport.

The third reason is that it is very difficult to know where diamonds come from, and they change hands so many times before they are even cut. It is estimated that an average diamond changes hands about eight times before it is cut. It is very difficult to keep track of that.

And lastly, blood diamonds are only a part of the problem. The other part is the slave and child labor that is used to mine the diamonds. Children dig through the soil in a mine in the hope that they will find a diamond. They are not paid for their work, only if they find anything. The poverty in many of the countries that sell diamonds is great and blood diamonds should reflect this as well, but they do not. And allowing the countries to sell these diamonds worsens the situation. However, there is no other income, so boycotting the diamonds would harm all of the people as well. It is estimated that 10% of the people in Congo rely on diamonds for their living. There is no real answer to any of this. And that is what I learned today.

Photo by Leah Newhouse: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-diamond-stud-silver-colored-eternity-ring-691046/

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