The credibility of the world's "blood diamond" monitoring group has been damaged after its failure this week to suspend Zimbabwe despite overwhelming evidence of serious human rights abuses and smuggling in the Marange diamond fields in eastern Zimbabwe.
The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, scheduled to meet in Swakopmund, Namibia, from November 2 to 5, 2009, should immediately suspend Zimbabwe for continuing human rights abuses and widespread smuggling in the Marange diamond fields.
The Europeans have spoken. After a recent high-profile visit of European Union officials to Harare, the EU said it will not lift targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe and that it was premature to resume development aid to a country that had not made needed reforms.
Zimbabwe has failed to remove its armed forces from the diamond fields in Marange and to end related human rights abuses there. As a result, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) should suspend Zimbabwe immediately.
United States President Barack Obama should use his visit to Ghana on July 10 and 11, 2009 to encourage its new president, John Atta Mills, to take a leadership position in Africa on issues of democracy and justice.
They might end up as costly baubles on sale in shops around the world. But for some diamonds mined in Zimbabwe, the journey begins in massive illegal pit mines where men, women, and children are forced to work long days under the brutal authority of government troops, who took over the mine in a spree of bloodshed.
Zimbabwe's armed forces are engaging in the forced labor of children and adults, and are torturing and beating local villagers on the diamond fields of Marange district in eastern Zimbabwe.
Namibia hosts the Kimberley Process Intersessional Meeting in Windhoek starting tomorrow. Namibia's Deputy Mines Minister, Bernhard Esau, who chairs the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), has a problem on his hands: protecting the integrity and credibility of the Process and the international diamond industry.
