IAN SMILLIE CASTS A NO CONFIDENCE VOTE IN THE KIMBERLEY PROCESS
An article posted on DTB Online, written by Chaim Even-Zohar reports that Ian Smillie is quitting Partnership Africa Canada and departing from Kimberley’s governing body. No one is more respected in ethical diamond sourcing issues than Ian Smillie. His departure is a major blow to the legitimacy of the Kimberley Process Certification.
For months, I have argued that the jewelry sector has relied on Kimberley to shield nefarious practices. Smillie confirms that The Deal is Rotten. Quoting his words from the article:
“I thought in 2003 that we had created something significant. In fact we did, but we have let it slip away from us. The KP has been confronted by many challenges in the past five years, and it has failed to deal quickly or effectively with most of them: smuggling and fraud in Brazil, and issues of even greater importance in Côte d’Ivoire/Ghana, Guyana, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and now Guinea and Lebanon. In each case the issue has had to become a media debacle before the KP would deal with it (if at all), and in the case of Venezuela, we have effectively condoned diamond smuggling – the very thing we were established to prevent.”
“Perhaps worse, we refuse to deal with human rights abuse in alluvial diamond mining, surely a fundamental issue for a body that aims to stop “blood” diamonds. For every hour we spend dealing with issues of pro-forma KP compliance, we devote four hours to argument about why and how to avoid real issues. We patrol country roads for jay-walkers, and ignore serious crime in our own back yard.”
“There is a basic truth: when regulators fail to regulate, the systems they were designed to protect collapse. In this case, the diamond industry, which means so much to so many, is being ill served by what has become a complacent and almost completely ineffectual Kimberley Process. Without a genuine wake up call and the growth of some serious regulatory teeth, it leaves the industry exposed, vulnerable and perhaps, in the end, unworthy of protection.”
Here’s a link to the entire piece:
http://www.diamondintelligence.com/magazin/magazine.aspx?id=7895
