The pro’s and con’s of the Kimberley Process

Results

The KPCS currently has a reputation for being a successful mechanism for promoting peace and preventing conflict by curbing the flow of conflict diamonds in a relatively short period of time. It’s participating countries together make up for more than 99% of the world diamond trade, meaning that conflict diamonds make up less than 1% of the international trade in diamonds. Compared to estimates of up to 15% in the 1990s this is a great accomplishment. Furthermore, the KPCS has succeeded in bringing together important stakeholders such as diamond producing and consuming countries, representatives from the diamond industry and civil society organisations and thereby enables a lively dialogue between them.

Several other strengths of the KPCS are that:

• It succeeded through participation of countries on a voluntary basis;
• It’s ‘minimum standards’ are actually fairly high as they involve legal reforms defining internal control of import and export of rough diamonds
• It’s monitoring mechanisms work reasonably well (in the form of peer review visits and annual reports; system audit; and a monitoring workgroup)