Martin Rapaport, a religious Jew known for his bluster and maverick status in the diamond industry, has come out swinging against the Kimberley Process (KP). According to Rapaport, the Kimberley Process is as “kosher as a ham sandwich.” Continuing his analogy, “If the Diamond Industry is like a kosher restaurant, the Kimberley Process is the rabbi making sure that all the food that’s served is kosher. Here we have a kosher restaurant selling ham sandwiches.”
The problem, according to Rapaport, is not that the Kimberley Process was inherently a bad idea, but that the KP is being used for a purpose it was not designed for. While it does succeed in preventing conflict diamonds from being sold by illegitimate rebel armies operating in conflict zones, he claims that it cannot prevent sovereign legitimate states from committing human rights violations against diamond miners. Pretending that it can, says Rapaport, makes people believe their diamonds are 100% kosher when, in fact, they might not be.
The trade in diamonds by illegitimate rebel forces has been mostly eradicated due to KP certification, and therefore a shift in focus has taken place from conflict diamonds to blood diamonds: the former has to do with a conflict zone, while the latter has to do with human rights violations in a sovereign zone that has officially recognized as conflict free. The biggest issue at the moment is Zimbabwe, where large scale state-sanctioned human rights abuses are being reported in and around the state-owned Marange diamond mines. Since Zimbabwe is not officially at war with anybody, the KP certification is finding it extremely difficult to filter out human rights abuses that occur there.
“The diamond trade and consumers cannot trust the Kimberley Process, its system of warranties, or those that promote the Kimberley Process as an assurance of the legitimate source of diamonds. We must face the fact that the Kimberley Process is a politicized government-controlled initiative that is incapable of eliminating human rights violations in the diamond sector,” said Rapaport.
Rapaport did not end his criticism on a doomsday note, however. He has proposed an alternative: the formation of a new certification scheme that specifically takes into account human rights violations. “The sovereignty of nations will not allow nations to put human rights into the KP. It’s never going to happen,” he said, which is why a new scheme must be tailored for the given situation.
Such a scheme would no doubt require a large amount of international overseers to supervise each mine in areas suspected of human rights violations, sort of like the IAEA for nuclear weapons. Inspectors would only certify those mines whose workers are treated fairly. Uncertified diamond mines would be banned from trading in the international diamond market. Such a move would undoubtedly affect diamond prices, but at the same time stop them from being marketed as what Rapaport calls “kosher ham.”
