Kimberley Process

Kimberley Process, a certification scheme, active since 2003, that attempts to halt the trade in so-called blood diamonds (rough diamonds sold to finance civil wars) and to protect the legitimate diamond trade. It has 49 participants (48 individual states plus the 27-member European Union), which together represent all the major diamond-exporting and diamond-importing countries of the world. In addition, the diamond industry and various nongovernmental organizations contribute to the process as observers.

The Kimberley Process is named for Kimberley, Northern Cape province, South Africa, where representatives of southern African diamond-producing countries met in 2000 to address the threat posed to the worldwide diamond industry by gems that were being mined and smuggled into legitimate channels in order to finance conflicts on the continent. In November 2002 in Interlaken, Switzerland, ministers from 37 countries and the European Community adopted the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, a document that spells out the minimum requirements for verifying that rough diamonds are "conflict-free." The requirements include, for instance, the issuing of certificates from an official exporting authority that specify the origin and contents of each shipment of rough diamonds. Participating states pledge to meet the conditions and to trade only with states that also do so.

In cases when compliance with the process cannot be verified, a country can be denied admission to the list of participants, or a participating country can be removed from the list and subjected to a trade boycott. Such was the case with the Republic of the Congo, which was expelled from the Kimberley Process in 2004 after it became apparent that the country’s diamond exports far exceeded its domestic production of diamonds—almost certainly because the exports included gems smuggled from rebel areas in neighbouring countries, particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Republic of the Congo was readmitted in 2007 after its government demonstrated renewed control over the diamond trade.