JCK: The Kimberley Process Is Going Nowhere. Should We Care?

Earlier this month, World Diamond Council president Stephane Fischler wrote that the upcoming Kimberley Process (KP) Plenary in New Dehli, India, could represent a “watershed moment” for the certification scheme, as it will get one more chance to revise its definition of conflict diamonds to include human rights violations.

The KP’s civil society coalition similarly warned that the meeting, which it called “the last meeting of a three-year reform cycle,” gives the KP “a final shot at addressing violence and human rights abuses in communities affected by diamond mining and trading.”

“All eyes” will be on the plenary, it warned. “[It’s a] make-or-break moment.”

But Brad Brooks-Rubin, a policy adviser for the NGO Enough Project, and the former State Department special adviser on conflict diamonds, tells JCK that the real make-or-break moment may surround Russia’s proposed lifting of the ban on diamonds from the Central African Republic (CAR)…

Click here to read the full article.