NGOs: Expel Venezuela Immediately from Kimberley Process
June 09, 08
A consortium of NGOs, civil society members of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, has released a statement calling for the immediate expulsion of Venezuela from the KPCS.
“Venezuela has been in a state of serious non-compliance for four years, and it is making a mockery of an important conflict prevention mechanism,” commented Ian Smillie of Partnership Africa Canada (PAC), one of the NGOs.
The statement notes that Venezuela was a charter member of the Kimberley Process (KP) from its 2003 inception, but, after the first quarter of 2005, it submitted no statistical information and no annual reports. And, although throughout 2005 and 2006, KP committees sent emails, letters and diplomatic demarches to the country, urging it to comply, it was to no avail.
In addition, as PAC details in a 2006 investigative report, The Lost World: Diamond Mining and Smuggling in Venezuela, the Venezuelan diamond business, which the government had lost control of, and interest in, was plagued by a combination of ineptitude, apathy and corruption.
PAC estimated Venezuela’s production at 150,000 carats per year, and yet Venezuela had officially exported only 33,000 carats in the four years it had been a member of the Kimberley Process, the statement says.
Venezuela did attend two KP meetings in 2007, denying the charges and promising to permit an international review team to visit during the first quarter of 2008. “Different dates for the review have since come and gone,” the statement reads, “with silence from Venezuela.”
“Venezuela has blatantly rejected several Administrative Decisions calling for KP peer review visits. Venezuela should stop wasting the time of the Kimberley Process, and the Kimberley Process should stop wasting its own time on Venezuela,” said Annie Dunnebacke of Global Witness. “KP ineptitude sends a disastrous message to other countries for whom participation is expensive and time-consuming. The Kimberley Process must now expel Venezuela from its ranks.”
The statement concluded saying that these civil society organizations working with the KP believe that if and when Venezuela wishes to rejoin, discussions can start afresh.
The statement was issued by the following NGOs:
Centre du Commerce international pour le Développement, Conakry
Centre National d’Appui au Développement et à la Participation, Kinshasa
Fatal Transactions, Amsterdam
Global Witness, London
Green Advocates, Monrovia
Network Movement for Justice and Development, Freetown
Partnership Africa Canada, Ottawa