NGOs Decline The Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC) Request For Participation
In two “Civil Society” letters to Michael Rae, CEO of the RJC and Matt Runci, Chairman of the Board of the RJC and head of Jewelers of America, Oxfam, Earthworks, CAFOD, Global Witness and others decline to support RJC, sighting a lack of a third party, multi-stakeholder approach for mining.
Quoting from the letter to Runci:
“We formally request that RJC—and its individual members—put its energies and resources into a genuine multi-sector, third-party verifiable standards process for mining”
At present, with RJC, we have:
which equals:
and
.
Because the RJC membership represents foundational supplier and brands (DeBeers, Rio Tinto, Zales, Tiffany etc) their approach undermines the credibility of the entire jewelry sector.
Therefore, I urge all jewelers and suppliers interested in creating a legitimate platform for ethical jewelry practices to support the international community’s attempt to make the Responsible Jewellery Council
actually responsible.
~ Marc Choyt, Publisher
Previous posts on the RJC:
Interview between Greg Valerio and Michael Rae
Making The Responsible Jewellery Council Responsible
Read the letters here:
Letter to Michael Rae and RJC members
Letter to Matt Runci, Chairman of the Board, RJC
The Proposals, themselves:
RJC’s Interim Mining Supplement Draft Report
IRMA’s Final Framework Draft
More about IRMA
