Natural diamonds are “conflict-free”. Diamond mining supports Western values and democracy.

Russia’s war against Ukraine is considered “conflict free” by the diamond industry’s Kimberley Process – because it uses a narrow definition of “conflict free” based on requiring the violence to be by (non-government) rebel troops. But Russia is not governed by rebel troops.

Diamond mining has supported questionable foreign regimes including the Kremlin in Russia and various African dictators.

One third of the world’s diamonds are mined in Russia by the Kremlin owned miner Alrosa.

“Conflict-free” does not mean free of every human rights abuse, and it does not rule out Russian mining origin. An ordinary grading report cannot tell you the mining country of a polished diamond. A blockchain record is only as useful as the information put into it.

This is more than a theoretical distinction. In 2009, Human Rights Watch documented killings and forced child labor by government forces in Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond fields. A definition built around rebel financing cannot cover every way that people can be harmed in the pursuit of diamonds.

Nobody wants to discover that the ring they bought helped pay for violence or exploitation. A promise that a diamond was ethically sourced is reassuring for exactly that reason. But before a buyer relies on it, they need to know what the promise actually covers.

A blockchain can help protect records from later alteration. It cannot check whether the original entry was true. If someone enters the wrong mining country, preserving that entry faithfully does not make the country correct. The people collecting the information still need to verify it and keep the record connected to the physical diamond as it is cut, polished and sold.

Misleading Marketing by Diamond Miners

The Natural Diamond Council, the mined-diamond marketing group now known as The Diamond Collective, claimed in Dec 2022 that 99.8% of natural diamonds were certified conflict-free. The same article said blockchain tracing “proves that you have purchased an ethically sourced diamond”. Both claims are more “comprehensive” than the systems behind them enable a claim to be made.

The Kimberley Process regulates trade in rough diamonds. Its definition of conflict diamonds concerns diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance armed conflict against legitimate governments. That leaves questions about abuses by governments themselves, as well as forced labor, child labor and other harm that a buyer might reasonably expect an ethical promise to address.

It is misleading and deceptive to suggest that nearly all mined natural diamonds are conflict free.