kimberly process

I saw Blood Diamond last weekend. I've been wanting to see it for awhile and then more recently it was recommended by my sustainability professor. He works for the UN and has traveled to Sierra Leone. He spent most of a lecture talking about the history and war and diamonds of Sierra Leone. He said Blood Diamond is pretty accurate in its portrayal of the late 90s early 2000s during the civil war.

The movie is absolutely devastating. So violent. It was hard to watch because I can't just reconcile it by saying its just a movie, when the movie is based on actual events and rebel groups. The brainwashed child soldiers. Corrupt government and military. Yet there was still a kind of beauty. Beautiful african landscapes. Joyous children in refugee camps. A hopeful man running a home for rescued child soldiers. family. change of heart.

It was incredibly long and probably could have ended in a few different spots. But I'm glad it didn't, the story was able to come full circle. To tell the viewer it's purpose, that all those deaths were not completely in vain. The Kimberly Process was instituted in Kimberly, South Africa in 2003. It was to regulate and prevent conflict diamonds from entering the marketplace, to provide certification to the consumer that the diamond they are purchasing was ethically and responsibly mined.

the movie uses a fictional british diamond jeweler called van de kaap, which is probably based on a real company, De Beers. De Beers had a monopoly on diamonds for decades. The movie hints that they actually owned more diamonds than they sold. They would buy them up and store them in vaults so they could present the few remaining as rare, and thus control the market value. Recently diamonds have been discovered other places, like canada, and De Beers let go of their monopoly hold on the market during the Sierra Leone civil war. Although unfortunately now about 60% belongs to a heroin trafficker.

Africa has continued to be exploited for it's rich natural resources. Which are extracted in an extremely unsustainable manner and cause immense violence. and then once the resource is gone and the people are left alone again, they must deal with the environmental and social destruction. I don't even know where to start.