Free Custom «Africa's Blood Diamonds» Essay Paper

The hot spot of the blood diamond conflict is Africa mainly in the 1990’s. During this time, Angola and Sierra Leone broke out into civil war, wars funded with the help of these diamonds. As a consequence of these wars, the Kimberly Process was created, in order to help checking integrity of diamonds and confirm no conflict during the mining process.

Diamonds were first used as war funds in Angola, by the UNITA, which after losing the funding from the USA, had to look for new ways.

Sadly, diamonds ruined the lives of several people, through these wars, even though most of them never saw one. During the civil war, nearly 2 million people were forced to flee from their homes and hundreds of thousands of people are still facing war-induced famine.

Meanwhile, the situation in Sierra Leone was similar. Over there, RUF was the leading rebellion force, and they used the same methods for funding their wars as their Angolan neighbors did. The leaders considered diamonds the main factors of the civil war, and stated that who controls the diamonds, controls the country. RUF’s main aim was to take over all the diamond mines, in order to gain full control over the country’s economy and to establish a safe financial background for themselves. Diamonds were circulating on the black market without any problem, and they were easy to be smuggled out of the country.

 

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After the civil wars of the two main countries, a process was created to try to stop the exchange of blood diamonds and bring justice to the people of Africa. In April 2003, the United Nations passed a resolution to help limit the trading of Blood Diamonds. This resolution was the Kimberley Process. It was a certification scheme for rough diamonds that have not yet been nationally certified. The process includes the notion of location of the diamonds, measurements, and exporters all of which say that the diamond has not funded crimes against humanity.