Conflict Diamonds

Considering the U.N.’s response to the war in Sierra Leone, it has a long way to go in its responsibility to ensure “legitimate governance under international law.” But U.N. efforts alone won’t stop the senseless killing in Sierra Leone over illicit diamonds. Kayne West’s song and video about “blood diamonds” makes us take an honest look at ourselves and ask: Is my fascination with diamonds contributing to the violence in Sierra

The book Out of Site by Erik Loomis discusses many problems when it comes to American companies outsourcing their factory jobs. One of the issues that he discusses are the horrible working conditions that plague foreign countries. These awful working conditions used to be normal in the United States in the early 19th century but laws soon changed that. Now these working conditions have just changed their location and continue to take people’s lives every year.

By 1997, three years after the ratification of NAFTA, 47% of Canadian manufacturing plants that existed in 1988, which accounted for 28% of the jobs in the economy, had closed. To add on, 350,000 manufacturing jobs from 2002 -2008, were lost due to industrial plants moving to Mexico. This drastic drop in factory/plant numbers can be attributed to the fact that companies put their bottom line first - moving facilities to Mexico because Mexican minimum wage is only $5.10 compared to a minimum wage of $11.00 in Ontario. As a further incentive to relocate south, because of NAFTA, corporations don’t have to pay tariffs on products shipped back to domestic markets. Therefore, it is evident that NAFTA has resulted in many industrial firms/plants moving to Mexico for cheaper labour, and the impact of such actions has cost thousands of Canadians their jobs.

trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada. The related loss of 1 million net U.S. jobs under NAFTA showing how damaging it has become for workers in the United States. Growing income inequality as the poor stay there while those benefiting from their fall enjoy the wealth. Also the displacement of more than one million Mexican campesino farmers and a doubling of desperate immigration from Mexico as they are losing their farms value over there. More than $360 million paid to corporations after “investor-state” tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks of, domestic public interest policies.

The conflict diamonds started to be present and problematic in Sierra Leone as soon as DeBeers mining company took control of all diamond prospects throughout this region. Although DeBeers was keeping a moderate watch on the trading and actions being taken through it, traders from Lebanon (bordered by Syria and Israel to the south) were able to easily smuggle and mine diamonds out through the company. Later towards the 1950s, countries, such as Sierra Leone, had to give up the chance of regulating the illicit diamond industry, thus having to warn owners of the mines to provide their own security measures for the mines and land they owned. The issue wasn’t justly political or economic until Sierra Leone gained its independence in 1961, letting Siaka Stevens enroll as Prime minister, therefore having a one-party ruler. Stevens took control, and monopolized the diamond mines, as well as encouraging them to gain power and fame nationwide. Things were looking austere for diamond control rights and regulations, not only to watch a civil war emerge, surging through the country as fire fought fire and brother fought against brother. As the war extended from 1991 to 1999, it brought forth other problems as a result of citizen on citizen warfare for the diamonds such as rape, murder, and sex slaves. Once 75,000 lives were claimed, the people of Sierra Leone finally realized that victims and executors of these terrible crimes has emerged from the cash crop known as diamonds.

Massacres have been conducted with self explanatory names, such as Operation Pay Yourself, to Operation No Living Thing (xxi). “Not only is the country (Sierra Leone) rich in gem and quality diamonds, but it’s also a repository for oil, rubies, gold, rutile, and bauxite. It should be the Saudi Arabia of Africa, but it’s not,” ( xxii). Fair trade was created for a reason similar to this, those usually distributing the product abuse the labour they have, which will only intensify the gap between the rich and the poor. Stones stolen from Sierra Leone at the tip of a machete and the barrel of an AK-47 could be anywhere, from safe houses in Monrovia, to deposits in Belgium, to display cases of jewelry stores in the neighborhood mall (226). This proves it has been close to impossible where diamonds have come from, which only equates this issue to being

In the beginning, Mexico had hoped to gain from the agreement by a growth in the national output, falling unemployment rates, and increasing trade with the U.S. The NAFTA has, perhaps, benefited Mexico the most out of all the other two countries. This can perhaps be best reflected in the rapid growth of the Mexican maquiladora industry. “A maquiladora is a labor-intensive organization that imports inputs, often from the United States, and then processes and exports them. Because maquiladoras often link the border economies of U.S. and Mexican cities, these plants have been some of the major beneficiaries of NAFTA. In 1993, Maquiladoras numbered only 2,143. Just six years later, the number of maquiladoras had increased 73% to 3,703” (Fugate 2005). This shows that NAFTA has positively affected the Mexican economy, more than it has any other country.

It has been said that a man must spend three-months’ gross salary to purchase an engagement ring. Although a seemingly joyful and romantic practice, the blood spilled for these beacons of love are not so amorous; the history behind a diamond ring gives an account of violence and corruption. These diamonds are the leading cause for civil war in poverty-stricken developing countries such as Sierra Leone and

Next, we can look at the virtue of integrity. The virtue of integrity states, “even in cases in which a local culture holds values different from one’s own, a person’s own integrity would require that one’s personal values not be abandoned.” and, “to abandon one’s values in the face of disagreement or diversity is to undermine one’s integrity.” Therefore, this theory concludes that the ethical solution is to make sure that the outsourced workers of U.S. companies are provided the same working conditions that are provided in the

US labor laws are completely contradicting to Liarg’s customs and considered unacceptable practices for US business. The US labor laws are vast, including but not limited to, protection of a worker’s workplace safety and health, child labor and equality. Noncompliance of these laws expose businesses to tremendous liabilities through lawsuits including individuals who may file lawsuits on behalf of relatives who work abroad for a

Corrupt President Mobutu Sese-Sekou took control after this, until a violent coup by the current President Kabila took him out of power. Similarly to other African countries, there are large revolts every couple of years, and there is never a time of total peace. Global Witness continues that continuous unrest and civil wars in Central Africa have caused a great dearth of funds for fighting these wars. In order to combat this, African Warlords, and sometimes the governments themselves, mine diamonds and illegally sell them in order for them to fund civil wars ("The Truth About Diamonds"). Furthermore, the mines themselves are inhospitable places (see figure 1). Greg K., a contributor to the website of Brilliant Earth, a diamond retailer committed to putting a stop to the blood diamond trade, reports that miners often do not have the proper equipment or sanctions to ensure their safety. They are also severely underpaid, as most African miners make less than one dollar for a full day of dangerous work. As a result, mining communities are often the poorest communities and starvation, illiteracy, homelessness, and infant mortality are everyday problems. It may seem absurd that millions of people subject themselves to the long hours and dangerous working conditions of working in Africa’s diamond mines, but According to Time magazine author Aryn Baker, due to the fact that there are no other jobs are available to the miners, if they want to feed

As a result of NAFTA reshaping Mexican agricultural policies, it led to the “elimination of [a program] that small farmers had relied on — price floor guarantees,” (“Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch”). Along with the elimination of tariffs, the U.S. took advantage of the removal of price floors and negatively impacted the Mexican economy through “dumping” American corn exports at prices below their production costs. According to Timothy Wise, “corn showed the highest overall losses, with average dumping margins of 19% [and] contributed to 413% increase in US exports” (Wise 2010). The U.S. quadrupled its corn imports to Mexico since 1993 as NAFTA did not phase out American agricultural subsides. Therefore, the U.S. was able to export cheap subsidized corn to Mexico, which caused an approximate 66% drop in the prices paid to Mexican producers for their corn cultivation. Hence, the decrease in corn prices has forced more than a million Mexican producers, who are more likely to be rural farmers and mid-sized businesses, to leave the corn market granted that they couldn’t compete with the reduced corn prices. It was also not morally correct of American firms to take advantage of Mexican corn markets through the use governmental subsidies. There was not an even playing field when it came to the production of agriculture as U.S. had plentiful resources of cultivating while Mexico was still a developing country who had eliminated all of its trading barriers to benefit its

Not only does this issue involve the politics of the diamond trade and the involvement of outside parties, but it is also a devastatingly serious human rights violation to the civilians of Angola. “There is an average of 52 land mine incidents per month and approximately 1 out of every 356 Angolans is an amputee as a result of these bloody conquests”[4]. It was determined in a United Nations Security Council meeting that “there are clear and major weaknesses in systems for controlling diamond trading, which no single country can address effectively because of the many alternative routes available to illicit diamond traders”[5]. Therefore, in order to combat the civil fighting between UNITA and the MPLA, we must educate ourselves about UNITA’s diamond trade, prohibit the sale of blood diamonds, and achieve a commitment from diamond dealers that their diamonds originate from conflict-free mines.

While the term “conflict mineral” can be used to refer to any mineral resource being exploited by a belligerent faction in order to perpetuate hostilities, it is most commonly associated with columbite-tantalite, cassiterite, wolframite, and gold ore, collectively known as 3TG minerals.i These ores, used to produce tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold, respectively, comprise a multi-billion dollar market fueled by the growing demand for electronics and other products related to the technology industry. The 3TG group is essentially vital in every modern electronic device: phones, computers, pacemakers, light bulbs, batteries, generators, planes, cars, everything.ii The issue with this industry is that these minerals are often harvested by a variety of military factions concentrated in Central Africa, then shipped across the porous border undeclared to Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, or Rwanda, smuggled to Africa’s eastern coast, and finally shipped to smelting factories in Southeast Asia and the Indian sub-continent.iii Once the minerals reach the smelting plant they are melted down with other shipments from around the world and any hope of identifying whether or not they were used to fund the growing number of human rights violations occurring in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and throughout Central Africa dissolves. As though this supply chain was not already complex and spanning over a myriad of legal jurisdictions each with their own issues, it is estimated

Blood diamond are “diamonds that originate from areas controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and internationally recognized governments, and are used to fund military action in opposition to those governments, or in contravention of the decisions of the Security Council”. Blood Diamond is a story about the precious gem acquired through blood and sufferings of common people. How much blood is spilt for each pieces of this luxury, how many tears dried into the very ground it is gathered from. Except from the people that are involved in the whole process of stealing or smuggling a nation’s natural wealth. Sierra Leone, where the storyline takes place, gets nothing. Its people are suffering through extreme poverty, hunger, illiteracy and diseases. Adding insult to injury, there is a fast emerging brutal terrorist group called RUF, destroying the system, collapsing government, killing innocents and taking children as soldiers. Making sure the country never progress and prosper or never grow the backbone to stand on its feet ever to use the valuable diamonds it holds on the ground. For example, when the illegal and unethical blood diamond trade was brought to light, it was ignored by the most potentially influential global players because of economic interest. What resulted was that the situation snowballed over the duration that it has occurred over and when the issue finally came to a head