British
jewellers are not putting enough effort into ending the
trade in blood
diamonds smuggled from war zones, accroding to a new report by Amnesty International and Global Witness.
Roughly 80 per cent of the
jewellery firms that responded to the
survey admitted they had no
auditing procedure in place to ensure their
gems are not supplied from war-zone areas.
Oscar-nominated film ‘Blood Diamond’ starring
Leonardo Di Caprio, highlighted on a worldwide
scale the link between conflict diamonds and
civil war in poor regions of
Africa .
However the
study shows
UK retailers are not helping to clean up the industry, with 11 out of the 42 UK
jewellery retailers polled failing to even respond to concerns regarding their diamond
policies .
Included in the 11 guilty parties are
Cartier, Graff Diamonds and Fraser Hart, along with giants John Lewis and House of Fraser, who despite being contacted four times failed to provide any information on their
gem policies .
Perhaps more suprsing was that over three quarters (79 per cent) of the
companies who did respond to the survey admitted to having no auditing procedures in place to combat the trade in conflict diamonds .
In 2003 the diamond industry signed up to the Kimberley Process (KP) - an agreement involving governments and other organisations to certify the origins of gems, which aimed to fight the growing illicit trade and prevent diamond smuggling from fuelling wars.
The industry agreed to provide guarantees on the origin of all diamonds traded or sold to show that they didn't come from conflict zones.
According to Amnesty International more than 4 million people have been killed as a result of "devastating wars" in Africa fuelled by conflict diamonds .
Nick Dearden, Amnesty International spokesman commented: "We knew there were still big problems but the fact that we still haven't got this problem sorted is really shocking.
"Only a small number of companies are implementing
third party auditing, which is something that clearly needs to happen."
Since the introduction of the Kimberley Process, the percentage of diamonds coming from conflict zones has seen a significant slide, dropping from 4 per cent to just 0.2 per cent - although the ending of several wars in Africa are believed to have contributed.
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