KP’s Moral Corruption

A very prominent industry player reacted to our editorial on the Lingering Relevancy of the Kimberley Process (KP) in a very insightful way – and we would like to share these spontaneous and non-edited thoughts with you – as a “guest editorial.” These views should be read in conjunction with other KP-related materials in this issue:

Dear Chaim,

Your August 6 editorial [The Utterly Non-Transparent Kimberley Process, the Diamond Intelligence Briefs - Issue 567] was masterful, as always. What surprises me about criticism of the KP is that it off like water off a duck. Governments seem not to notice it, and if they do notice, they don’t care. The industry is partly to blame. They have tagged along for the ride and said a lot of good things, but they are not leading. And where one of their buddies is even slightly threatened, they go into laager mentality.

If you knew of the debates on Zimbabwe inside the KP, you’d realize that the participants are not all dead, just pathologically paralyzed and unable to connect even two dots, much less three. Behind the scenes, Australian diplomats have been visiting their counterparts in governments that had a team member on the Zimbabwe review, trying to persuade them not to opt for suspension. The reason is obvious enough, but I thought after they lost John Howard, the Australians would have more gumption than that. Obviously the business interests of one nominally Australian company are more important than human rights, more important than a KP that works, more important even than the entire diamond industry, which will lose badly if the KP goes down.

I get it, but I don’t get it. These people should all be committed to an asylum for the criminally stupid. The whole thing gives new meaning to the word “corruption.”

Cheers,

X [Name withheld, as the person is on vacation and we couldn’t get permission to identify him/her.]

Unfortunately, most diamond traders don’t give a hoot about the KP. Moreover, it is only seen as an administrative and costly trading impediment, which is something they can live with because it is supposed to inspire consumer confidence.

Looking at all the articles in the general press about the dysfunction of the KP mechanism, it really has become time for the industry to do a simple cost-benefit analysis and ask ourselves if we aren’t better off without the KP. It is high time that this re-thinking process gets underway.

It is also worthwhile to remember that the KP was never ever meant to be a permanent feature. When it was created it was very important and very much needed, but it was bound by time.

The self-sustaining and self-procreating international bureaucracy where the collected air miles of the government bureaucrats may well equal in number the human rights abuses inflicted by the Zimbabwe military in the diamond fields on behalf of its government should all give us reason to pause in disgust. Something needs to be done. However, that being said, a decision as a result of a flawed decision-making process can never deliver the right outcome.

We are not telling KP what they should or shouldn’t decide. We are merely saying that that it should act in a transparent, consistent, responsible and effective way if it wants to continue to justify its existence.