Industry Website Provides Jewelers Opportunity To Show Their Commitment To The Kimberly Process
By John Caldwell
The Kimberly Process Certification Scheme, though a good one, will not be able to stop conflict diamond trade on its own. It needs the support of the entire diamond industry from the diamond producers, to cutters, to bourses, and finally the jewelers. While participant nations and the rest of the diamond industry are being lauded for their efforts in implementing and following the guidelines laid out by the Kimberly Process it has been shown that many jewelers and jewelry retail stores are not holding up their end of the bargain. In 2004 a survey conducted by Global Witness and Amnesty International among diamond jewelers in USA showed that only 11% of the visited stores have a clear policy on conflict diamonds. Jewelers need to have a more active participation in seeing the Kimberly Process push through especially since they are the face of the diamond industry and are the ones who deal with the consumers on a daily basis. If the consumers notice the lack of participation by jewelers they would lose faith in the entire diamond industry.

To address this problem, a new industry website was launched with the aim of getting jewelers to adopt policies against the buying and selling of conflict diamonds as part of their store policy. The new website offers free membership to jewelers in exchange for their promise to abide the policies outlined by the website

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