The Kimberley Process took its name from the South African city where diamond industry representatives, governments, and NGOs met in May 2000 to begin negotiating a response to the blood diamond crisis. Three years of negotiations produced the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which came into force on 1 January 2003. On that day, for the first time, every legally exported rough diamond in the world was supposed to be accompanied by a tamper-resistant certificate attesting to its conflict-free origin. The process involved over 70 countries and the entire diamond industry. Whether it worked as intended has been debated ever since. : Kimberley Process official documentation, kimberleyprocess.com; Bieri, F. (2010), From Blood Diamonds to the Kimberley Process, Ashgate Publishing

How the KP works: the certification chain

The KPCS operates through a government-to-government certification system. When a producing country exports rough diamonds, each parcel must be accompanied by a KP certificate, a government-issued document stating the diamonds are conflict-free. Importing countries verify that incoming rough parcels carry valid KP certificates from countries that are KP participants (Kimberley Process Core Document, 2002, kimberleyprocess.com).

The KP covers: rough diamonds only, not polished diamonds, not diamond jewellery. The certification stops at the point where rough is sold to a cutter. From that point, the industry's own System of Warranties (WDC System of Warranties) extends the conflict-free commitment through the supply chain to the retail level, through self-declaration on invoices (World Diamond Council, "System of Warranties," worlddiamondcouncil.org, see the WDC Warranties guide).

What the KP covers: the narrow definition

The KPCS definition of conflict diamonds is narrow: "rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance military action in opposition to legitimate and internationally recognised governments." This means the KP certifies that diamonds are not funding rebel insurgencies, it does not certify that diamonds are mined in safe conditions, that miners are fairly paid, that no child labour is involved, or that government security forces have not committed abuses in diamond-producing areas. A diamond certified as KP-compliant may still have been mined under poor labour conditions or in areas of government-authorised human rights violations (KP Core Document, 2002; analysis in Smillie, I., 2010, Blood on the Stone, Anthem Press, London).

The Marange controversy and Zimbabwe

The KPCS's most significant credibility crisis came with the discovery of diamonds at the Marange fields in Zimbabwe from 2006. The fields were controlled by government security forces, and reports from Human Rights Watch and Global Witness documented killings and forced labour in the mining operations. When KP participants voted in 2011 to allow Zimbabwean Marange diamonds to re-enter the KP-certified market, despite the documented abuses, Global Witness withdrew from the KP, stating publicly that the process had failed in its core purpose (Global Witness press statement, globalwitness.org, 2011; Human Rights Watch Zimbabwe diamond reporting, hrw.org, 2009–2011).

Assessed impact: what the KP has achieved

The academic and NGO consensus is that the KP has substantially reduced conflict diamond trade compared to the pre-2003 baseline. The most severe cases, RUF Sierra Leone, UNITA Angola, are resolved. Formal estimates suggest conflict diamonds accounted for approximately 4 percent of the global rough diamond trade in the 1990s; by the mid-2010s this was estimated at below 0.5 percent (World Diamond Council estimates; Bieri, 2010, op. cit.). The structural reduction in rebel diamond funding represents a real humanitarian improvement (Bieri, F., 2010, From Blood Diamonds to the Kimberley Process, Ashgate Publishing).

Primary sources

Kimberley Process Core Document (2002). kimberleyprocess.com. [Official KP founding document; conflict diamond definition; certification scheme requirements; participating country obligations.]

Smillie, I. (2010). Blood on the Stone: Greed, Corruption and War in the Global Diamond Trade. Anthem Press, London. [KP effectiveness assessment; narrow definition critique; Marange foreshadowing; pre- and post-KP conflict diamond volume estimates.]

Global Witness press statement on KP withdrawal (2011). globalwitness.org. ["The KP has failed", Global Witness exit statement; Marange decision rationale critique.]

Human Rights Watch, Zimbabwe diamond reporting (2009–2011). hrw.org. [Marange field documentation; security force killings; forced labour; evidentiary basis for the KP Marange controversy.]

Bieri, F. (2010). From Blood Diamonds to the Kimberley Process: How NGOs Cleaned Up the Global Diamond Industry. Ashgate Publishing. [Scholarly assessment of KP impact; NGO role in establishment; quantitative estimates of conflict diamond reduction.]

World Diamond Council. worlddiamondcouncil.org. [Industry compliance data; WDC System of Warranties as complement to KP; conflict diamond volume estimates.]