The incoming chairman of the international certification scheme for conflict diamonds has hit out at a plan by the G7 group of industrialised nations to track Russian diamonds, warning of “irreparable damage” to African producers.
Ahmed bin Sulayem, who was elected this week to head the Kimberley Process, a multilateral body tasked with cleaning up the diamond trade, said any proposed scheme “must take into account African diamond producing nations” such as Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa.
But the Emirati warned that a Belgian proposal to restrict the international diamond trade, which the G7 is considering adopting, “falls far short of this important objective”.
The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, said last week that the bloc would press ahead with a ban on Russian diamonds after securing sufficient backing from the G7 group of industrialised nations.
The diamond dispute is only the latest rift between Europe and African capitals. A ministerial meeting scheduled for next week was postponed after officials decided there was little chance the two sides would agree on a joint communique containing language on Israel’s war against Hamas and Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to three people briefed on the discussions.
The postponement follows disagreements between mainly Western countries, which have strongly supported Israel, and members of the Global South, who have called for a ceasefire.
But African nations are concerned that they would become collateral damage under such a proposal, with Antwerp profiting from their diamonds. Ministers from African diamond producing countries have also complained that they have been left out of the G7 discussions.
Sulayem said the prevailing view of African ministers at the recent Kimberley Process meeting was “that the proposed Belgian scheme would penalise African diamond producing nations and cause them irreparable harm”.
The African Diamond Producers Association, which represents 19 producers accounting for 60 per cent of global output, warned last month that the proposal would lead to “supply chain disruptions [and] additional burdens and costs” for mining nations.The Kimberley Process is the global body set up two decades ago to eliminate the trade in conflict diamonds following a UN General Assembly resolution prompted by international alarm over “blood diamonds” from Sierra Leone.
Western nations have been frustrated by the process’s inability to label Russian stones as “conflict diamonds” because the nomenclature is reserved for funding rebel groups, not wars waged by governments against other nations.
The EU has argued that a traceability system is needed to verify the origin of a diamond and make sanctions on Russian stones effective.
Four proposals have been put forward for a system to track diamonds through the supply chain that would pave the way for an EU ban on Russian stones.
They came from Belgium, home to a major global trading hub in Antwerp; France, with its large jewellery sector; India, the world’s largest diamond-cutting centre; and the World Diamond Council, an industry body backed by De Beers.
Under a version of the Belgian proposal seen by the Financial Times, Antwerp would become a “gatekeeper” to check non-Russian-origin diamonds entering the G7 nations.
