Do As You Preach

What do we expect from an organization that was formed to create positive change? Certainly that it would do as it preaches, right? Take the Kimberley Process (KP), for example. It was formed with the positive intention of stomping out the trade in diamonds that financed wars in Africa. This is done by a certification system that reports the amount, value and country of origin of each diamond shipment.

To do this well, however, somebody needs to track the data. By tracking the data, and finding inconsistencies in reports, we may know who and where is misreporting.

But to ensure that this happens, KP needed companies and governments to act with transparency. Companies have to honestly report their international shipments and countries had to pass this information accuretly to the KP. Companies and countries, in other words, have to be transparent in their trade. That is what KP is demanding from them. Without it the system won't work.

Is KP transparent? The annual reports, that "According to the Administrative Decision on Peer Review, participants are required to submit (…) on implementation of the Kimberley Process in their countries," are not made public. Annual global trade figures are up to 2008. The 2009 figures are yet to be published. No review mission reports are available either.

This is not just missing data from the public eye. "Edahn, the UN did not get this information either," Noora Jamsheer, from the UN Panel of Experts on Cote D’Ivoire, said today during a Kimberley Process and Consumer Confidence panel discussion at the JCK show. Odd. Even the UN, the largest international organization that backed KP is not getting the most basic reports about the KP's activities? This is especially odd because the term transparency was so often used by the speakers on the panel as something that is essential for the Process.

Why is transparency important? Without transparency there is no accountability. Who knows what information is hidden, or for that matter, what wrong doings are not exposed.

In the coming KP intersessional meeting in Israel, the discussions about Zimbabwe are closed to the public and the press. No one is providing any explanation as to why this is the case. Are they hiding something from the rest of the world? Is there some wrong doing that needs to be hidden from us? I would hate to think that something is being brushed under a carpet. Even if everything is good and clean, it needs to be seen. Justice, we all know, must be seen to be done.

Let's hope that in the coming days before the meetings start, a collective decision will be made to open the meetings and allow justice to be seen and done.