Diamonds, rubies, and totally different gems have prolonged been prized for the marvel they convey to engagement rings and totally different great jewelry-but recently, an growing variety of people have flip into acutely aware of the ugly story behind a number of of the world’s most useful stones. Study on to be taught further regarding the points associated to invaluable gems, and what you’ll be able to do to help ethical jewelry, reducing gems’ worth to workers, communities, and the Earth.
Worker and Neighborhood Hazards
Gemstone mining shall be hazardous to the nicely being of workers and communities alike. Diamond miners usually work in cramped and unsafe conditions in tunnels, and dirt from the mines might trigger respiratory illnesses in workers and residents of shut by communities. Mining of colored gem stones, resembling rubies and emeralds, is normally achieved on a smaller scale than diamond mining, nevertheless nonetheless holds risks. Consistent with the Worldwide Labour Group (ILO), many small-scale miners are unable to spend cash on the devices and instruments that may forestall accidents. Because of mining contains transferring huge portions of earth, it might truly moreover alter native ecosystems and hurt watersheds. And, although plenty of the worldwide areas the place gems are mined have authorized tips setting a minimal age for workers in hazardous occupations, the ILO has moreover documented child labor in mines.
Child labor may be a problem throughout the chopping and sprucing a part of every diamond and colored gemstone manufacturing, quite a lot of which takes place Asia; consistent with the ILO, India alone polishes 70 % (by weight) of the worldwide diamonds yield. In her e e-book Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Empire (The Disinformation Agency, 2003), Janine Roberts explains, “Child labor is illegal in India, nevertheless this regulation is approach ignored. Sharp youthful eyes are quite a bit prized by Indian diamond retailers.”
The human struggling linked to gem manufacturing wouldn’t end with those who mine and scale back the stones. In Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, earnings from diamond product sales have funded weapons purchases for armed opposition groups resembling Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Entrance, which perpetrate human rights abuses.
Battle Diamonds
The nonprofit human rights group Worldwide Witness first launched worldwide consideration to the issue of ‘battle diamonds’ fueling and prolonging violent conflicts in 1998. Along with Physicians for Human Rights and totally different groups, they raised shopper consciousness of diamonds’ hyperlink to battle and generally known as on diamond sellers to stop searching for stones from worldwide areas the place diamond product sales are used to fund armed conflicts. The United Nations Security Council formally acknowledged the place of battle diamonds in prolonging violent conflicts in some worldwide areas, after which urged the diamond commerce to develop a worldwide monitoring system that can affirm the origins of uncut stones and arrange a paper path of possession.
Michael Fleshman, writing throughout the UN journal Africa Restoration in 2001, credit score NGO campaigns with making the diamond commerce further receptive to the UN’s identify for a worldwide monitoring system than it in some other case would have been.
Members of the diamond commerce began meeting regarding the concern in 1999, and in 2002, the commerce launched the Kimberley Course of Certification Scheme. The Kimberley Course of, which entered into stress in January of 2003, requires worldwide areas exporting robust diamonds to ship them in tamper-proof containers along with certificates guaranteeing the packages’ origins and contents. Nations receiving the shipments ought to certify that they have not been tampered with. Solely worldwide areas that belong to the Kimberley Course of can legally commerce in robust diamonds.
Quite a few human rights groups have acknowledged the Kimberley Course of as a step within the acceptable path whereas criticizing its lack of neutral monitoring and verification. Groups resembling Worldwide Witness and Amnesty Worldwide proceed to press the diamond commerce in order so as to add auditing, verification, and oversight components to the Kimberley Course of. Completely different advocacy groups are drawing consideration to one of the best ways people, plenty of them indigenous groups who’ve lived on the equivalent land for a whole lot of years, can face eviction when gem deposits are discovered of their areas.