CIBJO withdraws from Responsible Practices Council

In a letter to the Council of Responsible Jewellery Practices (CRJP), CIBJO President, Dr Gaeatano Cavalieri, announced the organization would be withdrawing from CRJP with immediate effect, and would be suspending the activity of officials representing the organization on CRJP’s committees.

Cavalieri cited concern among CIBJO members that the structure that is being proposed for CRJP will benefit the bigger firms at the expense of the smaller jewelers, represented by CIBJO.

“CRJP is at a critical juncture right now,” said Cavalieri, “because it is apparently about to adopt an operational structure that will establish it is as type of international standards organization for the industry. The problem from our perspective is that the process that is being devised for companies to obtain and maintain CRJP accreditation is extremely cumbersome and expensive, which means that most of its participants will remain major players in the industry, as is the case today.

“The status provided to us within CRJP was that of a founding member, alongside 13 others, most of whom are large privately and publicly owned companies. With our single voice on the CRJP board of directors, and with what appeared to be a divergence of interests with the majority of those on the board, we came to feel that we were unable to influence the process from within,” Cavalieri stated.

In his letter to the CRJP board of directors informing them of CIBJO’s decision to withdraw from the council, Cavalieri noted that: “For CIBJO, as an organization which is made up of national organizations from around the world, and therefore representing many thousands of small and medium-sized players in the jewelry, gemstone and precious stones business, the potential that CRJP will remain an exclusive club of mainly larger players is something it cannot support. Moreover, by agreeing to remain an active a CRJP member, CIBJO would indicate the tacit approval of its member associations of the current CRJP structure and operation.”

Headquartered in Milan, Italy, CIBJO is the umbrella body that acts as a forum and global representative for national associations in the jewelry, gemstone and precious metals sectors in some 40 countries, including all of the world’s major markets and production centers.

“We support the ethical principles on which the CRJP was created, which indeed were first declared in a CIBJO forum, and we would like to engage the council in order to address the specific issues about which we are concerned. Consequently, while I will be withdrawing CIBJO from the CRJP, I hope that our absence will be temporary,” Cavalieri stated in his letter to the CRJP board of directors.