Heavyweights Brilliant Earth And World Diamond Council Duke It Out Over The One Percent Lie
By Beth Gerstein
Brilliant Earth, a leading provider of ethical jewelry, is involved in a skirmish with the World Diamond Council, the organization representing the global diamond industry, over the accuracy of industry statistical claims on conflict diamonds.
The WDC states on its web site, www.diamondfacts.org, that “more than 99% of diamonds are now from conflict free sources.” The web site similarly claims that “considerably less than 1% of diamonds” are conflict diamonds. Many jewelry retailers repeat these statistics to the thousands of diamond jewelry shoppers who visit jewelry stores daily.
But Brilliant Earth argues in a series of blogs, begun November 28, that diamond industry statistics mislead jewelry consumers into believing that the diamond supply is basically ethical, when in fact more than 10% of the diamond supply is tainted by grave human rights violations including torture, rape, and killings. The jeweler calls the notion that conflict diamonds make up less than one percent of the diamond supply the “1% myth.”
“It is time for the diamond industry to stop feeding retailers and consumers a statistic that glosses over brutality that most consumers would find shocking,” said Gerstein, co-founder of Brilliant Earth. “The one percent myth should be exposed for what it is – a promotional gimmick designed to keep consumers from asking hard questions.”
For its part, the WDC has offered a rebuttal to Brilliant Earth’s November 28 blog. “The World Diamond Council stands by its statement that only a small fraction of 1 percent of the rough diamonds sold today can be qualified as conflict diamonds,” writes the WDC in its lengthy response to Brilliant Earth, available on the Brilliant Earth Blog.
The main area of dispute is over how to classify diamonds from countries such as Zimbabwe and Angola. Citing media reports and human rights investigations, Brilliant Earth calls attention to torture, rape, and killings tied to diamond mining in these countries. Together, Angola and Zimbabwe exported 11.5% of all rough diamonds in 2010, according to statistics released by the Kimberley Process, the international diamond certification scheme.
The most serious violence may be taking place in Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe is believed to be looting the country’s diamond wealth to fund his political party and maintain his grip on power. Since 2008, Mugabe’s military has been deployed in valuable diamond fields in eastern Zimbabwe. The military has massacred civilians, enslaved adults and children in the mines, and run camps where disobedient miners are tortured and raped, according to reports.
However, the WDC does not count diamonds from Zimbabwe in its statistics on conflict diamonds. Nor does it include diamonds from Angola, where the military is suppressing unlicensed Congolese diamond miners using torture, rape, and killings.
Brilliant Earth also observes that diamond industry statistics do not account for other serious issues such as extreme poverty or the widespread use of child labor in diamond mining. According to rights group Global Witness, over a million diamond diggers in Africa earn less than one dollar a day.
“For years, the diamond industry has tried to sweep under the rug problems like killings, torture, sexual violence, child labor, corruption, and extreme poverty,” said Gerstein. “Only by excluding almost every diamond tied to violence can the diamond supply be said to be 99% conflict free.”
In its rebuttal, the WDC acknowledges the range of ethical problems in diamond mining and does not dispute that diamond mining in Zimbabwe has been plagued by violence. However, it defends its statistics as accurate.
The WDC relies on the meaning of “conflict diamond” used by the Kimberley Process, the international diamond certification scheme, and approved by the United Nations.
That definition limits the term’s meaning to diamonds used by rebel groups to finance civil wars. It therefore does not include diamonds tied to violence by governments, like the violence in Angola and Zimbabwe. Brilliant Earth responds that the Kimberley Process’s definition is unnecessarily narrow and that it is deceptive for the diamond industry to promote the statistic at all. When consumers hear that the diamond supply is more than 99% percent conflict free, they assume that it is also more than 99% violence-free.
“It makes no difference to consumers whether diamonds are tainted by abuses by rebel soldiers during a civil war, or by despotic militaries that plunder and torture,” Brilliant Earth writes in a December 7 response to the WDC. “And it’s wrong for the diamond industry to hide behind a technical, bureaucratic definition that produces a misleading statistic.”
The gap between industry statistical claims and what Brilliant Earth believes is a more accurate statistic, is only expected to grow wider in the coming years.
Until recently, diamonds from Zimbabwe have been partially banned by the Kimberley Process, the international diamond certification scheme, due to the serious human rights violations in the country’s diamond fields. However, in a controversial decision, the Kimberley Process decided in November to allow Zimbabwe to export most of its diamonds with “conflict free” certification.
Brilliant Earth is a leading U.S. jeweler dedicated to advocating for a more ethical diamond industry. For the Brilliant Earth Blog home page, visit http://blog.brilliantearth.com/. For more information on Brilliant Earth, visit www.brilliantearth.com.
