The cliche states that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, the solution easily adopted for the husband in the wrong, or the “will-you-be-mine-forever couple”. Gem companies, both mining and retailing, around the globe records show that a huge percentage of their sales come from the crystal substance. Russia’s Alrosa, the world’s largest diamond producer by volume, churned out 43 million carats of diamond in 2018 alone, which should give us an image of what other members of the world diamond council are producing yearly. This should reflect wealth, socio-economic development and financial prosperity accumulated within diamond mining countries where the gem is naturally found, but the reality is a tale of irony this piece will tell another day.
Diamonds, like those that are mined with a diamond miner, are a symbol of love to the hands with the purchasing power, it is a symbol of survival, a basket of food for a family to the hands that scavenges the mines and hard surfaces of the earth to find the raw crystals. View the prettiest halo engagement rings Sydney here.
Despite the global outcry on the trading of diamonds from conflict-prone regions which led to the emergence of the Kimberley Process, there’s still a large lacuna in the industry that causes the core labor of the industry to be underpaid, overworked without basic health and social amenities. Photo by Vlad Chețan from Pexels
Following this report by TIME, conflict diamonds still escape the trading protocols put in place to ensure that every gram of diamond on the front market is conflict-free, without violence or loss of lives, especially in African mines. There’s a need to hold the retailers accountable as to where the diamonds they sell come from and push them to take a stand against the life-threatening circumstances the diamond miners, whose labor they put on the market are currently facing. This is the age where we trace down the factories where our clothes are being made, we chase down child factories, we hold farmers responsible for what they feed the cow, whose milk and beef we purchase. The same yardstick should be extended to the diamond industry, the mining companies and governments who are lagging in the implementation of the Kimberley Certification process and the dispensation of their corporate social responsibility to the communities, whose lands have become hunting grounds, should be brought forward.
New to the world of diamonds and what is more to it than thousands of dollars splashed on as jewelry, check out the videos below to know more.
