Striving to Improve Lives: The Diamond Development Initiative

It comes as no surprise that almost all of the world's artisanal miners are unregistered, unregulated and unprotected. The vast majority toil in appalling conditions for nothing except what they are lucky enough to unearth. The labor is dirty, hard, often dangerous, and provides most diggers with just a couple of hundred dollars a year. In many ways they are also fighting a losing battle since the competition in a mostly informal economy drives down prices at the pit level, with the only people who benefit being the relatively small number of middlemen.

But more than that, there are serious security issues resulting from the deep poverty, unemployment, overcrowding and desperation in the totally unregulated diamond mining districts of Sierra Leone, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and elsewhere in Africa, but also in South America.

Where governments have made efforts to deal with illegal mining, violence has frequently resulted, leading government forces to back off. And that has often encouraged ruthless buyers, money launderers, weapons dealers, drug traffickers and rebel forces to step into the void unchallenged.

Ian Smillie, chair of the DDI board of directors, sums up the situation in the alluvial mining sector: “Some 10 million people depend on artisanal diamond mining for a livelihood. They work under difficult conditions and most earn less than a dollar a day. Many are children. We aim to change that and to show that diamonds can be a symbol not just of wealth, purity and love, but also of meaningful development for some of the world’s poorest people.”

The DDI says its undertaking is to find and disseminate information on the challenges of artisanal diamond mining. It aims to promote better understanding of, and possible solutions for government regulation and mining regulation, distribution and marketing channels, organizational aspects of artisanal production, legitimate and transparent distribution channels, organization among artisanal miners, to work for free and open markets for artisanally mined diamonds, and to promote wide participation in the process, including governments, donors, industry and development organizations.

Against the background of the huge number of people involved in artisanal mining – both diggers and their families – and given the half century of destabilization created by unregulated informal diamond economies, the DDI believes formalizing the sector could bring wide-scale benefits for miners, governments, the general population of diamond producing countries and the industry as a whole.

By reducing chaos and uncertainty in artisanal mining, the diamonds produced could at least provide a better livelihood for hundreds of thousands of miners and their families, rather than hazardous, harmful, badly-paid piecework. The nature of artisanal mining is generally small scale and does not usually involve mechanized equipment and mass transportation. The diggers typically use the most basic tools available, such as shovels, picks and sieves. Consequently, they are only able to mine relatively tiny amounts of rough stones from alluvial deposits in riverbeds, streams and along their banks. And that, in a “perfect” vicious circle, ensures that they stay put.

But the DDI works in tandem with the diggers and their communities to illustrate that diamonds can provide a sustainable source of income for the millions of people living in poverty. "We envision 'development diamonds’ as diamonds that are produced responsibly, safely, with respect of human and communities’ rights, in conflict-free zones, with beneficiation to communities and payment of fair prices to miners," the DDI says in its mission statement.

The DDI believes that a huge number of mostly young men work in the alluvial diamond fields of Africa. It claims there are up to 120,000 diggers in Sierra Leone, while in the Congo, the government estimates that there are 700,000. Meanwhile, in Angola, despite the ongoing expulsion of illegal diggers from the Congo, there may still remain 150,000. And those numbers, taken together with diggers in Guinea, Ghana and elsewhere on the continent, mean there are probably one million African artisanal alluvial diamond diggers. In addition, there are estimated to be another 200,000 in Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela. Worldwide, the number of artisanal alluvial diamond miners is conservatively estimated at over one million. Indeed, it may in fact be nearer 1.5 million.

And that is why the DDI aims, via education, policy debate and projects working directly with artisanal diamond miners and their communities, to cut poverty levels and push for sustainable development. DDI addresses the relationship between alluvial diamond diggers and all eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; education; promoting gender equality and empowering women; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a global partnership for development.

The DDI operates on several levels. Creating awareness of the conditions in which the alluvial miners work is one, and due to its multi-stakeholder approach, it aims to engage with a range of industry bodies in addressing the issues since no single organization can do it on its own. The DDI requires the assistance of donor agencies that usually distance themselves from mining areas in general, and the artisanal diamond mining sector in particular because it is so complex and troublesome.

"Everyone wants a success story for their dollars, for their euros, whatever that may be, and so therefore, no donor agency really wants to be involved in something so messy that will take years to resolve," explains Dorothée Gizenga, executive director of the DDI. "They want success stories to say ‘look at what we did,’ and they are in the media, they are in the press and so on.

"Our job is primarily to engage all of those people. International organizations that have the capacity to deal with the issues, whether it is education on HIV, whether it is on construction of proper housing…so other organizations that also, because they don’t know, or because it is not their focus, or because they don’t get funds for it don’t go into those areas. The biggest job is engaging people," adds Gizenga who is the daughter of Antoine Gizenga, a Congolese politician who was Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2006 to 2008.

Among the most painful aspects of the issue of artisanal mining is the large number of children working in diamond mining. British charity Save the Children Fund carried out a study in just one area of one province of the DRC, and identified around 13,000 children working in mining. There are 10 provinces, all of them with artisanal diamond mining in DRC, and in each province, there is more than one site.

The inexorable conclusion is that many children are working in the most appalling conditions. The problem is compounded by the on-going conflict in the country, wracked by rebel activity, leading to children without an educational or family framework entering the diamond digging sector.

The stimulus for the creation of the DDI came about since, despite the work of the Kimberley Process, a study by Partnership Africa Canada called Rich Man Poor Man, showed that almost nothing had changed for artisanal diamond miners. They were still living on a dollar a day. They were still working under hardship, dirty and often polluted conditions. They were very unstable and still very vulnerable to ruthless people. The DDI believes that the Kimberley Process conflict provision mechanism can only be sustainable if the conditions of the artisanal diamond miners are improved beyond recognition.