African conflict diamonds

If you're in the market for some bling, be sure and ask for a certificate and/or warranty to ensure that it is a non-conflict gem. Prosperity gems actually feed the starving African economy, and there's no sense in contributing to rebel child soldiers, death, or the destruction of families already suffering enough from various hardships.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/...ond_Ethics.php

A bit about the structure of the Kimberley Process, whose role is to regulate the diamond trade:

http://www.kimberleyprocess.com:8080...c5d1aff87b5461

Just an fyi:

http://www.un.org/peace/africa/Diamond.html

[90dayRichie]

so lets see your engadgement ring....

/taps foot impatiently

[Hey Bubu]

Originally Posted by Luxe

If you're in the market for some bling, be sure and ask for a certificate and/or warranty to ensure that it is a non-conflict gem. Prosperity gems actually feed the starving African economy, and there's no sense in contributing to rebel child soldiers, death, or the destruction of families already suffering enough from various hardships.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/...ond_Ethics.php

A bit about the structure of the Kimberley Process, whose role is to regulate the diamond trade:

http://www.kimberleyprocess.com:8080...c5d1aff87b5461

Just an fyi:

http://www.un.org/peace/africa/Diamond.html

You've been watching the trailer for that one movie eh?

[dBu]

Ehhhhh..... The whole diamond trade in itself is messed up. Diamonds are not even that rare, they artificially drive the price up by releasing only a certain number of stones per year. As far as blood diamonds go, who cares, a diamond is a diamond. Nothing you or I do is going to change anything or anyones ideology in a back assward fucked up third world country.

[transplant]

The fact that people weren't aware of the situation about diamonds spells "fail" to me. I speaking in general.

[-m-]

Just think of how many genocides Mike Jones's mouth has caused. Staggering.

[housefish]

Originally Posted by Shitler

Just think of how many genocides Mike Jones's mouth has caused. Staggering.

I dipped Amber's Diamond in mixture of blood and trans fat then fried it before giving it to her.

[e-brake]

Easy solution, dont buy diamonds. Even diamonds that are "certified prosperity gems" just have counterfeit certifications anyway. A simple printed slip of paper makes a diamond worth houndreds of dollars more in value and this has created a huge black market of fake certifications.

So called "blood diamonds" make up over 50% of the diamonds on the market. Yet if you ask every diamond in almost every jewlery store is certified non-conflict gems. That means that counterfeiting of certifications must be rampant in the industry.

As a consumer the only thing you can do to avoid purchasing a blood diamond is to not purchase diamonds at all.

[PETA]

yeah, that'll fly with aspiring Texas brides to be

Originally Posted by dBu

Ehhhhh..... The whole diamond trade in itself is messed up. Diamonds are not even that rare, they artificially drive the price up by releasing only a certain number of stones per year. As far as blood diamonds go, who cares, a diamond is a diamond. Nothing you or I do is going to change anything or anyones ideology in a back assward fucked up third world country.

bullshit. as consumers, we either endorse conflict diamonds or we don't. its our job to research and educate ourselves about our purchases, or just keep the attitude you seem to have that nothing we do matters anyway.

[Hey Bubu]

Aren't the diamond mines own by two families anyway?

Originally Posted by RC

so lets see your engadgement ring....

/taps foot impatiently

don't have one yet! we've pushed the date back to winter 2007/early 2008, so i'm still in the market for a ring. just wanted to share my thoughts with other future newlyweds so they make consciencious consumer decisions as far as knowing where their stone of choice comes from, so that they don't endorse the conflict diamond trade.

Originally Posted by e-brake

Easy solution, dont buy diamonds. Even diamonds that are "certified prosperity gems" just have counterfeit certifications anyway. A simple printed slip of paper makes a diamond worth houndreds of dollars more in value and this has created a huge black market of fake certifications.

So called "blood diamonds" make up over 50% of the diamonds on the market. Yet if you ask every diamond in almost every jewlery store is certified non-conflict gems. That means that counterfeiting of certifications must be rampant in the industry.

As a consumer the only thing you can do to avoid purchasing a blood diamond is to not purchase diamonds at all.

actually the blood diamond trade numbers have drastically reduced in the past few years, but they still exist in some areas. and purchasing non-conflict diamonds actually feeds africa's economy, so why would you NOT buy diamonds? from the article i linked in the first post:


The film "Blood Diamond," which opened Friday in U.S. theaters, is set in late 1990s Sierra Leone, when the West African country was in the throes of a civil war in which untraceable diamonds allegedly funded fighters who hacked off people's hands with machetes and burned entire villages.
Since then, the situation has improved dramatically. But while diamonds may no longer be fueling war, they are a long way from helping pull people out of poverty on a continent that produces about 65 percent of the world's diamonds, valued at about US$8.4 billion a year, according to the World Diamond Council.
Wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola and Congo have given way to peace deals — and even to democratic elections. Congo inaugurated its first freely elected president in more than four decades on Wednesday.


And since 2003, African diamonds have been labeled and tracked, given "birth certificates" in a process that tracks gems from extraction to sale to ensure gems in western jewelry stores don't fund rebels.



Yet in practice, rights groups say the oversight organization called the Kimberley Process has had a number of problems that could keep it from being effective if conflict were to break out again in major diamond producers.
And residents in some of the diamond-producing countries recovering from years of war say they still aren't seeing much benefit from the gems leaving their shores for markets in North America or Europe.
Sierra Leone's eastern diamond region still has poor roads and little electricity or running water

[thumpcbd]

Originally Posted by Luxe

bullshit. as consumers, we either endorse conflict diamonds or we don't. its our job to research and educate ourselves about our purchases, or just keep the attitude you seem to have that nothing we do matters anyway.

While your comment may, or may not be true, many folks, myself especially, don't research every single purchase we make, nor can I. I will concede that the bigger the purchase the more I will educate myself on the product, but for diamonds I had only heard of the 4 C's before. (There are only 4 right???) The 4C's and what they mean is as far as my research would have gone, I would have never researched any other tangential topics related to buying a diamond.

Casey

that's what most people do, research the 4 c's. but me personally, i'm one of those girls who doesn't give a crap if Gina from Highland Park has a clearer or bigger rock than me, or turns her nose up at my diamond for whatever reason. In fact, I want a yellow (less expensive) diamond set in a vintage antique gold band because the band is actually more important to me than the diamond! All I care about is if the diamond is not a blood diamond, I don't care aobut what people here think about my ring. To me, a yellow non-conflict diamond is still a diamond!