Pressure piles on Russia ahead of Kasane meeting
Mbongeni Mguni | Monday June 20, 2022 06:00
Russia’s ambassador to Botswana, Andrey Kemarskiy, was scheduled to leave for Kasane on Thursday ahead of the week-long meeting of a top diamond industry organisation, whose members include both Moscow’s friends and foes, as well as the ongoing target of its hostilities, Ukraine.
Prior to his departure, on Wednesday, Kemarskiy, as Russia’s point-man in Botswana, held a briefing for local journalists, presenting a nine-minute video tracing the origins of the conflict in Ukraine and essentially justifying Moscow’s actions.
The diplomat will have to mount a similar charm offensive in Kasane when the Kimberley Process’ 85 member states and civic groups meet from June 20. Known informally as “the KP,” the global group is the diamond industry’s broadest and most authoritative organisation, enjoying the backing of the United Nations (UN).
While the West has sanctioned Russian diamonds since that country invaded Ukraine in February, Russia’s stones are still flowing in the global diamond industry through Russo-neutral cutting and polishing centres primarily in India which cuts and polishes more than 90% of the world’s rough diamonds.
A debate on Russia and possible sanctions at the KP level would have represented a global censure of Russian stones, cutting off a key revenue flow for Moscow. Russia is the world’s largest producer of natural rough diamonds, followed by Botswana.
That will not happen however. The KP operates on a strict consensus basis and Russia and its ally Belarus have already blocked a proposal by the European Union, Ukraine and the US to include a censure of Russian on the Kasane agenda.
The block means no official agenda item and therefore no official vote. However, it does not preclude on-the-floor discussions and debates. A similar route was taken in March at a special meeting of the United Nation Economic and Social Council in New York, called to look at the “Lessons from the Kimberley Process”. At that meeting, representatives from the US, Belgium and the European Union stood up to berate Moscow, while the Russian representative parried back.
In Kasane, Kemarskiy will have his work cut out for him, as a leading diamond industry lobby group and civic organisation, the KP Civil Society Coalition, this week ramped up its criticism of Russia and the KP’s lack of action.
“The Kimberley Process being unable to even discuss whether it should continue certifying Russian diamonds as conflict-free, proves what the Civil Society Coalition has been denouncing for years, namely that the world’s conflict diamond scheme is no longer fit for purpose,” the organisation said in its hardest-hitting statement yet since Russia’s invasion in February.
“Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, its accumulation of serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, its continued choice for war over de-escalation, and the reported links between Russian diamonds and this conflict, completely erode the credibility of the KP Certification Scheme, which claims to guarantee a conflict-free diamond trade.”
The Coalition said the Kasane meeting was critical to the future of the Kimberley Process and its relevance.
“Never before was this conflict prevention scheme, mandated by the United Nations to break the link between diamonds and conflict, confronted with one member waging war against a fellow member country.
“The fact that several participants are turning to unilateral measures to stop diamonds from funding this conflict, clearly demonstrates how the KP and its Certification Scheme have reached their limits.” According to the Coalition, the lack of international coordination around the Russia question is “plunging the diamond sector into the deepest crisis since the blood diamond challenges of the late 1990s, which lay at the basis of this very process”.
For others, however, whatever the result of the Kasane meeting, the near two-decade old Kimberley Process has reached the end of its relevance. Diamond industry legend and early proponent of the Kimberley Process, Martin Rapaport, says with its failures in restricting diamonds from known violent areas such as Marange in Zimbabwe, the KP has been losing credibility. The failure to get past the consensus rule and censure Russia is simply the final nail on the coffin.“At the moment, they say Russian and Marange diamonds are non-conflict but they are,” Rapaport said at a breakfast meeting on Sunday in Las Vegas, monitored virtually by Mmegi.
“We actually want the World Diamond Council to disassociate from the KP because the KP is certifying blood diamonds.
“If the World Diamond Council doesn’t leave, we have said we will withdraw our membership of the Council.
“I don’t trust the KP or the trade organisations or even companies.”
Rapaport is a highly influential member of the global diamond industry. He is the founder of RapNet, the world’s largest diamond trading network with daily listings of diamonds valued at $8.7 billion (P107 billion). Rapaport also publishes the Rapaport Price List, the diamond industry’s standard for the pricing of diamonds.
In Las Vegas, at the JCK trade event, one of the retail diamond industry’s major calendar highlights, Rapaport circulated a petition seeking the World Diamond Council’s withdrawal from the KP. The Council, a key KP member representing the diamond and jewellery industry, has also raised objections about the snail’s pace of action at the Kimberley Process in previous years. A withdrawal by the Council, which also financial and technically supports the KP, would be a major blow.
The Kasane meeting, as most analysts agree, represents a make or break for an industry whose product is based solely on the emotional symbolism attached to it by its customers. Failure to decisively deal with the reputational damage the KP has suffered thus far, could turn ethical customers off the shiny stones altogether, or at least the natural ones which are more problematic in their origins, than the synthetic ones.
Whatever charm Kemarskiy is able to muster in Kasane may not be enough to stave off the broader reputational damage to the rough diamond industry as a whole.