Written By: Kakuna Kerina, Matthew Leone & David Tam-Baryoh

Restricting the Diamond Trade

Another cynical example of the too-little, too-late, international foreign policy directed toward the war in Sierra Leone, is the August 23, 1999, statement of Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy calling for tough restrictions on the diamond trade. This initiative, which is almost a decade overdue, does little for the tens of thousands of innocent civilians who have lost their lives, and the countless others who were victimized by a war almost wholly financed by the nation's mineral resources. Remarkably, there has been no mention of investigating the illegal diamond trade to date. And DeBeers, which controls about 70 percent of the world's diamond sales, in their announcement of support for the measure, cited the flow of illicit diamonds as a potential threat to its ability to influence prices.

The United Nations Angola Sanctions Committee, headed by Canadian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Robert Fowler, conducted a fact-finding mission to explore the ways that sanctions aimed at curbing diamond smuggling by the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) rebels can be made effective. According to Foreign Minister Axworthy, those measures may be applied to Sierra Leone: "If we can find the right formula of course, a formula which was acceptable to the Security Council, then I think it would equally apply to the (Democratic Republic of) Congo and Sierra Leone."

Diamonds from Sierra Leone have easily found their way to Antwerp, the diamond capital of the world, and make the return trip to the war zone in the form of weapons. The diamonds-for-weapons exchange allowed the RUF to re-supply after it was initially routed by the March 1998 ECOMOG intervention, to fund the January 1999 offensive which almost captured the capitol, and enabled the RUF to negotiate from a position of strength at Lomé.