A TRADE IN DEATH AND WAR
HOW DICAPRIO'S BLOOD DIAMOND MOVIE GAVE AMPUTEE KIDS HOPE
The film Blood Diamond tells how diamonds have been the cause of widespread death, destruction and misery in Sierra Leone.
The soil of the small West African country has some of the richest diamond deposits in the world, and the stones can be excavated by hand.
Blood diamonds are jewels that are mined in a war zone and sold illegally to finance rebel groups. People who buy these gems are financing brutal and bloody civil wars. The Sierra Leone conflict was characterised by mass amputations and forced conscription of children.
Blood Diamond is set during the civil war that ravaged the country in the 1990s, claiming 75,000 lives.
It was this easily smuggled commodity that brought the Revolutionary United Front to diamond-rich Kono in 1991. Rebels forced thousands of civilians into work gangs harvesting the stones, which they handed to Charles Taylor, neighbouring Liberia's infamous warlord, in return for arms.
They earned an estimated £60m a year. The illicit trade is also believed to have helped al-Qaeda fund the September 11 attacks. During Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war, children were used as labourers in diamond mines. It is only in recent years, after an international outcry, that industry and governments came up with a certification scheme to prevent such stones entering the supply chain.
In 1999 De Beers, the world's largest diamond company, with massive control of both mining and distribution, introduced a zerotolerance policy. But the certification scheme is still far from watertight.
Amnesty International has branded it "open to abuse". The charity urges shoppers to ask jewellers where their diamonds come from and whether they are conflict-free.
