“The Kimberley Process has been confronted by many challenges in the past five years, and it has failed to deal quickly or effectively with most of them: smuggling and fraud in Brazil, and issues of even greater importance in Côte d’Ivoire/Ghana, Guyana, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and now Guinea and Lebanon.”
The above is a quote from Ian Smillie, the driving force behind Partnership Africa-Canada (PAC), the immensely influential conflict diamonds NGO, who recently announced his departure from participation in the KP governing bodies.
Ian is one of the founders and architects of the rough diamond certification mechanism and has earned the respect and trust of all sides. “I am leaving Partnership Africa-Canada (PAC) because I feel that I can no longer in good faith contribute to a pretense that failure is success, or to the kind of debates we have been reduced to,” he says in a farewell letter to KP members.
Read the full article on Diamond Intelligence Briefs, the online publication of Tacy Ltd, a strategic consultancy serving the stakeholders of the international diamond industry.
Ian’s announcement is an unfortunate blow to the sustainable jewelry movement.
