Living Room Session: Are Diamond Mines Benefiting All Producing Communities?

The mental images diamonds conjure include luxury and beauty. However, behind the glitz and glamor lies a complex reality that in some cases involves human rights abuses, environmental degradation, and poverty in mining communities. During the September Living Room session, our guests Farai Maguwu, Executive Director of the Center for Natural Resource Governance in Zimbabwe, and Hans Merket, Research and Policy Manager at the International Peace and Information Service (IPIS) explored these issues and proposed solutions for a more sustainable and ethical future for the industry. These are key takeaways from the session:

• The Story Map Project: Hans Merket presented the story map which details the impact of diamond mining on 180 artisanal and small-scale mining sites, as well as industrial mining sites, across six African countries. Artisanal mining provides a livelihood for hundreds of thousands of people, but the informal nature of the sector makes miners vulnerable to exploitation and limits their ability to contribute to sustainable development.  
• Traceability challenges: Despite advancements in technology, full traceability of diamonds remains difficult, especially for artisanal mining. While diamond cutters can often identify the origin of stones based on their characteristics, it's difficult to trace stones through the entire supply chain. As a result, assessment of human and environmental impacts associated with diamond production becomes challenging.
• Human rights and environmental issues: Farai Maguwu provided updates on the ongoing human rights abuses and social issues faced by communities in Marange, a diamond-rich region of Zimbabwe. The example proves that the diamond industry still faces challenges related to violence, forced labor, poverty, and environmental destruction in mining communities. 
• Together with our guests, we developed the following recommendations to address the aforementioned issues:
• Community involvement: Establishing community concessions could empower local communities, ensure they benefit from mining, and promote sustainable development.
• Formalizing artisanal mining: Implementing regulations to improve working conditions and reduce risks for artisanal miners is essential for protecting their rights and ensuring that they have access to basic services like healthcare and education.
• Transparency and accountability: Increasing transparency about supply chain issues and holding companies accountable for their actions will enable consumers and stakeholders to make informed decisions.
• Collaboration: Fostering collaboration among industry stakeholders, governments, and civil society organizations is needed to develop innovative solutions and technologies that aid traceability.

We believe that the diamond industry must prioritize human rights, environmental sustainability, and community well-being. By implementing these recommendations, the industry can work towards a more ethical and sustainable future.

To learn more about this topic, we encourage you to watch the recording or read the transcript of the session below.

0:00:00.0 Cecilia Echeverri: Welcome everybody, welcome everybody. This is the Living Room, a bimonthly session for conversation and information sharing on topics related to sustainable jewelry practices. We cover a variety of topics from practical tools that can be implemented in your jewelry practice, to in-depth learning about artisanal mining, for example. And today we're going to be discussing diamonds and how a unique case study and a special story map resource may help us all understand not only where our diamonds come from, but also the realities of people and environments face along the way. As usual, we'll have a blog post summary and recording on our website. I'm Cecilia Echeverri, Operations and Outreach Director at Christina T. Miller Sustainable Jewelry Consulting, and I'm glad to be here with you all along with my teammates.

0:00:55.5 CE: Christina Miller, our founder and lead consultant, and Ana Brazaityte, our Education Director. Through our educational and consulting services, we provide strategy, guidance, and education on responsible sourcing and sustainability for the jewelry industry. You can find out more at christinatmiller.com, and you can always reach out to us with questions or suggestions. We want to say a big thank you to those of you who have been able to contribute to making these sessions happen through the Pay What You Want option on our website. We really appreciate the support that you give us, as well as to everybody else here for showing up for this conversation and listening to it down the road. And just a quick housekeeping before we begin. This conversation is being recorded and will be in the public realm, we encourage your participation through the chat and may read some questions or comments out loud.

0:01:53.0 CE: For the best sound quality for the recording, please make sure your microphone is on mute. And remember that this is a kind community space, so please be respectful of everybody's privacy and personal space if you're using the chat. Our next Living Room will be November 8th, please sign up for that. Please sign up for our newsletter to receive a reminder, as well as takeaways from this session. You'll find the link in the chat or in the caption below. And without further ado, I'll hand it over to Christina and let's start this conversation.

0:02:31.4 Christina Miller: Welcome everyone. Thank you Cecilia and thank you everyone for joining today. This is in some ways a little bit of a reunion when it comes to diamonds and especially hearing the stories from communities most directly impacted. Because of work that we did a few years ago with the Kimberley Process Civil Society Coalition to help bring the stories of the various mining communities and civil society groups to the jewelry sector in a more familiar way. Because prior to not everyone in the industry was familiar to this group, and at that time, my colleague Jared Holstein helped and worked on that project with us. So it's great to be together here with Hans and Farai and Jared and others that were part of that process. So it is my great pleasure to welcome Farai Maguwu, the director of the Center for Natural Resource Governance, otherwise known as CNRG.

0:03:40.2 CM: And Farai, I hope you all realize, is sort of a great leader in this space and is the person who really helped bring the struggles in Marange, more than struggles, the human rights atrocities happening in Marange to the world stage, and he is joining us today from Zimbabwe to share some updates. And then we also are so lucky to have Hans Merket, you may have heard him in various areas before because he's a go-to source of information as the researcher and policy manager at International Peace and Information Service, or IPIS. And he's currently calling in from Tanzania at the very beginning of a multi-month stay there, advancing his research. Hans and IPIS also participate in the Kimberley Process Civil Society Coalition, IPIS is a member, the only non-African civil society member of the coalition. So today, our whole purpose is to get into some of the deeper complexities around diamonds.

0:05:00.0 CM: When you spend a lot of time in the trade, in this retail space or manufacturing space, we tend to hear a lot about conflict-free diamonds, or we hear about the new traceability schemes, or we hear about the market and how they're selling or they're not selling. And we often also only hear from a few specific minds, there's a lot of information that doesn't make its way into the space of jewelers or into more broad conversations. We also wanna deepen our understanding of what is really meant by continuous improvement. So it's one thing to do your due diligence and identify an issue in the supply chain. But then what do you do with that information? And what do you ask of your suppliers around what they're doing to help with that particular situation or that particular change? So what are the expectations we can have for companies and for governments and for communities, have expectations of ourselves, as well as for others all along the value chain?

0:06:07.4 CM: And then when impacted communities tell us that something is happening, that their land is being degraded, that they're facing violence, that their water rights are being infringed on, etcetera. It is really on us to listen and figure out what it is that our responsibility is within that circumstance. And so honoring the requests and pleas of impacted communities is one of the things that we can do. And then we may get to some specific questions that you could ask of suppliers, but we'll get there. So as you know the diamond context we are dropping in today is very dynamic, we are in the middle of a race toward traceability mechanisms. The diamond market has slowed down; sourcing and due diligence, expectations continue, they're not going away. And we know that Farai and Hans have stories to share and information to offer that will broaden our awareness and understanding. Okay, so what I'd like to do is start off from hearing from Hans.

0:07:35.8 CM: And this is because your work with IPIS and the research that you've been doing, you have come to appreciate the value of open access data. And what I mean by that is making research available broadly, and also that the people that are developing the research are in fact the grassroots communities that are in and around mining areas. The people that access this open research could be companies working on due diligence and wanting to know more about their supply chain, they could be governments, they could be multi stakeholder initiatives, researchers, individuals, independent designer jewelers who want to know more about diamonds. And the idea is that more diverse thinking on a topic by giving access to the information can lead to new engagement and even new solutions. So today, can you introduce us to the work that the Kimberley Processed Civil Society members have conducted over a period of time.

0:08:56.8 CM: That has led to a story map of a country by country look at some of the mining activity going on that we don't necessarily hear about on a regular basis. So we'd love to hear from you and kick off on that note.

0:09:16.7 Hans Merket: Alright. Thanks a lot, Christina. I hope my connection is good enough so that you can all hear me. Yeah, also I really appreciated the time in working together and it brings back good memories to meet. And I think you've helped us also a lot in connecting these two worlds, the very local level where the mining happens with the jewelers and trying to find language that both speaks to us. So that has been... Yeah, that has helped us work forward also a lot. So yeah, what I wanted to talk about as by way of an introduction is indeed the work that we've been doing with the Kimberley Process Civil Society Coalition on trying to map the grassroots impact of diamond mining operations, we've do... IPIS has been doing that for different minerals and mining operations in different countries, we've developed a methodology whereby we do make mobile data collection campaigns.

0:10:16.4 HM: We make that so basically teams go out to mining sites with mobile phones, they take coordinates, pictures, they collect all kinds of information and then we try to put that on maps and we try to visualize that in ways that different kinds of stakeholders can use. And so we wanted to do this now together with the grouping of different civil society organizations in order to try and come up with or have at least start a database on impacts of diamond mining and in a comparable way across different countries. So I'll try to share my screen now, we'll see whether it works but we'll also share the link to the story map, so even if my connection would not be good enough, you can also have a look later. So this is where we try to summarize some of the work and all of this is also more in depth reports on the different countries.

0:11:11.7 HM: So basically what we did together, so with a group of different civil society organizations that you see listed there, is visited 180 diamond mining site, of digital diamond mining sites in six countries. And we also conducted surveys in communities around industrial mining sites in Lesotho, to try and understand a bit how these impacts work. And then I think as a background it's important to say that these diamond mining contributes to around $7.5 billion per year to African economies, which is substantial and an estimated 30% of that of African diamonds are produced with artisanal methods so it's definitely an important sector there. I'll quickly scan through the story map to show you a bit, to give a sneak peek into the different issues that we touch upon. First of all, it's about social economic impacts of mining and then when we talk about artisanal mining it's important to say that it provides a livelihood for hundreds of thousands of people.

0:12:14.8 HM: It's... And that leads to an important source that is an important source of income to many families. Unfortunately, and I'll come back to that due to the fact that this sector isn't, hasn't really a conducive legal or policy framework for it, there's not a lot of that contribution that translates into sustainable developments. So many of these communities have... Get an income from it but don't manage to escape the poverty trap that is still there. Large scale mining is much more lucrative, of course, it provides important percentages to GDPs of countries. The problem is that it's often more difficult, it's they are very different contacts these mines than the communities in which they are embedded and it's often difficult to reconcile both. Many of these mines operate very much in isolation, which leads to an underexploited potential for local development, but also often tensions with these communities that live there.

0:13:15.0 HM: And I say often that it's definitely not always, but there is... There are frictions that easily arise. When we talk about artisanal mining, the informality of the sector is an important factor to talk about. And that's mainly because, as I said, these legal frameworks are not really well suited for this kind of activity, meaning that in practice many of these miners operate in what you would call illegality. Even... And that's often even because it's impossible for them to comply with the rules that exist. But this informality illegality makes them vulnerable to exploitation by traders because they can't access finance and they get trapped sometimes in that bondage practices and so on. There is important issues when we talk about traceability that has been mentioned, but for artisanal mines it's all the more difficult, because we talk about 100, sometimes thousands of small mines.

0:14:12.7 HM: It's very difficult for government services of any kind of country, wherever on earth to try and trace all these diamonds that come and go in multiple directions. We've done that the research in Cameroon where you have the problem with conflict diamonds from the Central African Republic entering the supply chain in Cameroon. It's also here a vulnerability we often refer, yeah, we often refer to these miners being vulnerable to exploitation by criminal organizations. They are part of it, but it's not necessarily because they want to, but because they have no other choice and often without knowing that is so. When we talk about working conditions also in these mines, it is they work with very rudimentary means, meaning that also they often don't take sufficient safety precautions so they make deep pits, don't support them well. In the rainy season, there's often pit collapses, there's also still a problem of child labor in this sector.

0:15:17.0 HM: It's not as acute as it was maybe 15 years ago because of a lot of awareness raising that has happened by civil society organizations by governments. It has improved a lot, but it is still an issue that exists with for instance done our partner in the Central African Republic did quite some research on that. Gender equality is a big problem; it means that women often do similar labor than men for less return, they get less profit from that or they are only allowed to perform the less rewarding jobs. But quite paradoxically, they are key in keeping this sector running because it's women that also provides all the supporting services to these mines, that do the restaurants holding, that come with the... They have the small commerce and so on. That is being... Yeah, that allows these miners to keep on working day in and out. When we talk about large scale mining, I think an important contribution.

0:16:21.0 HM: So we visited these communities around the mines, asked them how they see the impact. Many people refer to corporate social responsibility, it's an important contribution. These mines invest in schools and in health centers and so on, but you see that there's often a mismatch with what these communities need or wants. And that's... And I already mentioned that I'd come back to it probably more is the isolation of these mines. The fact that these are very different realities that an insufficient effort is being made to reconcile these realities, leading to misunderstanding, also they don't really know who's behind that big wall of that industrial operation and the other way around. Environmental impacts are an important one both for artisanal and large scale mining. I won't go into too much detail there with artisanal, it's often the turbulence in the water that leads to fish death.

0:17:17.0 HM: With industrial mining it can be more. Diamond mining doesn't use any chemicals or toxic material, generally. So it's more the explosives that are being used that release nitrates in the water that also lead to, yeah, the degradation of water quality, less fish and so on. Then we end with a number of recommendations. In general, for the artisanal mining sector, the main recommendation is try to come up with a policy and legal framework that allows this sector to thrive, supported rather than trying to fit it into a framework that is designed for industrial mining and try to generate as much taxes as possible from this sector. There's... The contribution of this sector does not rely in tax, in these miners paying taxes in the first instance, it's really making sure that this provides a sustainable livelihood for people and contributes to sustainable development.

0:18:13.4 HM: When we talk about the large scale mining sector, it is really trying to make sure that the community engagement that happens that it is meaningful, try to understand who is living around you, try to see how you can find a better match between these different contexts, how you can break the isolation between these different realities. So just, yeah, I touched on many different issues, but I hope it gives a bit of an idea of the things that we've been looking at.

0:18:40.6 CM: Yeah. Is there a particular area of the various studies that you would like to put our attention on more specifically? Maybe if there is, if you could go into detail on an artisanal mining example that you'd like to share more and then an LSM example that you could share more about in depth.

0:19:04.7 HM: Yeah, I think what is quite interesting is that we've seen that when we look at artisanal mining, we wouldn't often associate it with what we call then corporate social responsibility investments, 'cause that's something that we associate with industrial mining. What we see in practice is that actually many of these artisanal and small scale mines, they provide very similar contributions to the communities around which they operate, but often in a more informal way. But they have arrangements with local village authorities and so on in which they provide a percentage of their revenue to build schools, to build health centers in a way that is often better matched with the local reality because, of course, these mines form part of the community that has these specific needs. And that's something that isn't being reported often. It isn't being picked up in legal frameworks, it is a reality that is there, that is often misunderstood, but that which holds a lot of potential to do more.

0:20:10.1 HM: And it would be interesting to look at that more. Maybe with regards to large scale mining, we often, we did some comparative studies as well on different kinds of minerals as well and different kinds of operations. We found that often it can be quite simple to break these barriers between the large scale mines and the communities that live around it, it's sometimes as simple as staff of these mines leaving the compound in which they often stay to go and have a drink in the bars that are around. It's in the town to go and do their shopping in the village that is nearby, to go and have a talk with the people who are there. Now they don't...

0:20:53.0 HM: They hardly ever meet and already and that creates a friction as such because then you start having all these kind of rumors and a lot of the negative perceptions that communities have are based on rumors often. There's a lot of suspicion of water pollution that is not necessarily... It's not always clear to what extent we are talking about real pollution or whether it has just suspicion. But if there would be more just day-to-day engagements it could already help to just know who you're talking to, put a human face on it, and I think that would promote understanding on both sides.

0:21:29.7 CM: Yeah, that's fascinating. And we did, we have been following a story over time, a large scale diamond mine that is one that you don't hear of as often in the industry. It's the Williamson Mine and it's currently run by Petra Diamonds, part ownership Petra and part the Tanzanian government, and there, what happened there was a major tailings spill. So all the dirt, all the crushed up rock that had to be removed to get the diamonds gets kept in these large ponds. And the pond wall broke and all the sludge from that, sort of went downstream. And you've been monitoring that particular story for a while.

0:22:19.9 CM: So this is one of those cases where we had sort of a tragic disaster that really didn't make its way into jewelry news, but definitely was a major issue for the diamond industry broadly and something we should have known more about. But that was now a few years ago. So what have you seen... When we have expectations for best practices, for example, you've given a few examples of large scale mines could be interacting more with local communities or paying closer attention to their needs. But what happens in a case like this where there's a major issue that occurs and how does the company, what is the best way that they sort of dig their way out of the problem?

0:23:06.8 HM: Yeah, I think you summarized it quite well. Another factor that's complicated this situation is that actually scaling them breached this tragedy happened in the midst of a process whereby the mine was trying to undo some harm, legacy issues of its past with a private security company that had been committing quite horrific human rights abuses over a period of nearly two decades, and in which there had been a settlement and the company was trying to improve, set up a grievance mechanism, compensate victims, and then this tailing dam happened in a moment where trust was being revealed in a fragile way. And, of course, that that didn't help. So I think that the company clearly made an effort to try and solve this situation.

0:24:08.5 HM: They set up a process rather quickly to look at how to identify people that had suffered damage from this tailing dam breach. So we went to the area a few months after it happened and you really saw, it's a huge mud spill. So you see farms being covered, houses damaged, and I think one of the big issues there was that the main source of water that the communities have been using was destroyed. So now the company has been building a new water source, a new big pond from which they can tap water, but in the meantime, what they're trying to restore, so what they did is they had trucks coming with drinking water to these villages to, yeah, that wasn't a solution but it was, it's, of course, no ideal solution.

0:24:57.7 HM: Communities had to queue in line for very long times in the morning, they didn't often know when this truck was coming, so they were waiting for an entire day to see how that would go. There was not often enough water. So the company tried, but they're, yeah, you're, of course, running behind on things because it is a very challenging situation. Also, because they wanted to go so quick, it wasn't always very clear which procedures they were using. So people didn't always know where they had to present themselves to claim damages that had been done. There were estimations made of costs, but according to, yeah, that was also sometimes quickly done, not necessarily compensating, maybe compensating the damage to the land, but not necessarily compensating the fact that they missed a few harvests because of the damage that had been done and so on. So I think that an effort was made, but there's still when you talk to these people in the villages around to mine, you feel that there's a lot of discontent still.

0:25:56.2 HM: And that's with many mines that have a legacy problem that goes back far. It's very hard to restore that trust. And you make an effort, but it's, it is very costly to restore these damages. And maybe a company can't necessary afford it to give the necessary compensation that these people would have. Then the company would go bankrupt. Or it's the same with all the human rights abuses they're trying to compensate. They set up a grievance mechanism for that. And 5,500 people or more signed up to have their claim heard about violence they had suffered by the private security company. Not necessarily all these claims are true. They have to investigate that, but try and come up with a decent compensation for people who have bullets still in their body, who have life changing injuries. That is not, how, yeah, how do you do that? When is it enough? When is it enough not to restore trust? When does it still make sense to continue or maybe, yeah. So it's very complex to deal with these maybe kind of damages.

0:27:12.9 CM: Oh, that was a really helpful explanation, Hans to understand that situation in more detail. If anybody has questions that you want to throw into the chat that we could get to, we're happy to address them as we can. And I think we're gonna soon transition to Farai, but I had one more question. And that is, and maybe this is in part for the community to answer too, is when it comes to the Williamson Mine, for example, this large scale operation, as well as several of the artisanally mine sites, knowing as a purchaser of the diamonds, knowing where they came from continues to be a challenge. And there's also reticence in the industry to say where the stones are coming from. And that has to do with the fact that some of these stories aren't the ones that are so beautiful or that we would like to tell further.

0:28:22.7 CM: So, I don't know. I'm sure someone from the group can pop in with sort of a, not a better, but a, maybe a specific example of how do you determine where the stones are coming from for you? And right now it doesn't seem like it's very possible unless you have a deep understanding of the design and the shape and the crystal structure. But after it's cut, that's kind of lost. So, I don't know, Mickey or Jared, would either of you like to pop in with just an anecdote about how people can know more about where the stone is coming from, and just briefly, 'cause then we'll go on and meet Farai.

0:29:15.2 Jared Holstein: I think Mickey should definitely handle that one.

0:29:17.4 CM: You have to unmute Mickey. Thanks.

0:29:24.4 Mickey: You got me now. So yeah, I can try. My stomping grounds is West Africa, Sierra Leone in particular, but, I've been mining gold and diamonds in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, for a little over 45 years. I'm a diamond cutter by trade. And so, to answer your question, for me, I can pretty much recognize where the diamond comes from. I could say maybe 90% of the time because of special features. For instance, the Guinea stones usually fluoresce. They have a nice color. The inclusions that are inside are recognizable. Liberia has a much smaller production, but they also have very distinct qualities, specifically along the Mano River Union that join Sierra Leone and Guinea, or the Mano River. There's a lot of fancy colors there, particularly greens in Liberia on the other side of the river in Zimmi, which is well noted around the for the yellow stone in Sierra Leone.

0:30:42.8 Mickey: So that's indicative of that particular area. Sierra Leone stones are just the finest stones in the world. They're just, they're beautiful, well shaped, most of the time up the head range, colors usually go up when you put them to the wheel and finish them. I think if you look at the history in the past, the people who can really trace these stones are the diamond cutters. Originating in South Africa, that's how we had our first color grading system is the Cape Stones of Cape, the yellow stones from the Cape area of South Africa, the Yaga which is the finest color from the Yaga mine in South Africa, the Wesselton, these were the first before GIA and AGS introduced their color grading system. This is what the South African cutters classified those stones. And again, they were probably 95% accurate as they could tell you what mine those stones came from. So there's traceability at the human level without any technology. The problem I have with traceability is you've got to trust the original source. If you don't have it, if you can't qualify that, then you can go all the way down the chain and it doesn't matter because your original evaluation of that, it could be wrong.

0:32:25.0 Mickey: So that's the problem I have with the traceability, is just you got to believe somebody at some point that that's where it came from. Especially when you're talking about artisanal miners. I've been a diamond dealer exporter in those three countries I mentioned, and I can tell you goods are, in all three of those countries from Zimbabwe, Angola, all over the African continent because they're able to freely move with the Africans and be transported. So, because you bought it in Sierra Leone it doesn't qualify it as as Sierra Leone stone and unless you have the expertise to evaluate diamond and the experience, that, you can identify it that way. But again, you got to trust somebody and it's, to me, it's at the source.

0:33:24.6 CM: Mickey, thanks so much for sharing your experience and popping on unexpectedly to answer a question. We really appreciate it. Thank you. There's another question that is for Hans in the chat about the, specifically the nitrate contamination stemming from blasting and whether or not this is something that can be cleaned up or is it a perpetual forever problem?

0:33:58.7 HM: Yeah, it's a very good question. I must say we only, this is, yeah, we're not the experts on environmental monitoring, water quality monitoring. It's something that we touched upon here and there in several cases. It's something that comes back around different mines. The problem is that, yeah, you often have competing versions. We try to support several organizations in doing water tests. They take them to laboratories, the company does the same, doesn't necessarily always release the results, but disputes the results that we release. So it's a back and forth game often. And we can only, of course, to do, to really know where pollution comes from, you need to be able to do comparative tests in a tailing basin and in the vicinity of the mine a bit further downstream to be able to identify the source of pollution.

0:34:52.2 HM: So it is, it's one of the suspicions that it may come from the use of explosives that could clarify. We also, we're not too sure about that. It's definitely an area that would require research to understand what affects these water qualities and how it can be handled. Is there a way to make sure that if it is a persistent problem from explosive, would there be a way to isolate this problem so that it doesn't contaminate waterways? It's an area that definitely requires more attention. Yeah.

0:35:25.8 CM: Thanks. So Brandy, I see your hand and we have to do this super fast so we can get to Farai. But go for it.

0:35:37.2 Brandy: Okay, well, just super fast, then. First, I do think it's really important that in our language, we do specify when we ask questions like that of whether or not you're asking about artisanal mine, mining or formal large scale mining. I also think that we need to specify who in the middle is getting the stones and what is required of them, the manufacturer. And I also wanted to just state that yes, it is a DeBeers mechanism, but put it all aside, Tracr is a system whereby all of the site holders that buy from DeBeers immediately get their stones from rough to polished, traced, every single step. And many other larger Indian manufacturers are using blockchain, whether they be their own or other to do the same thing. And so that is an immutable chain. And so I, we are taking, or the industry is taking steps and there are, of course, always going to be difficult actors, so I just wanna give that side of the story as well.

0:36:46.7 CM: Thanks, Brandy. Well, yeah, we've all been following Tracr with great interest and kind of the opportunities that unfold because also, sort of in the knowing, the way due diligence is described as this constant action and reaction and fixing and re-fixing and looking and looking. And so with that traceability information, you can definitely have a better sense of where to put restorative energy. Farai, we would love for you to come on camera and join us now. Thank you so much for joining this evening from Zimbabwe. For all of you, just a quick reminder, the sort of heroic figure that Farai is in this space, really took risks to tell story, his experience what he was seeing in Marange. And so Farai, we're hoping that today you can give a little bit of specifics of how the situation that you first sort of brought to light in a way, how it has transformed over the years and where are we now?

0:38:11.3 Farai Maguwu: Thank you so much, Christina, for this space, to talk to your audience concerning the situation in Marange, in eastern Zimbabwe. So, the diamonds in this area were discovered around 2006, and then in 2008, that's when the government moved in to take the diamonds from... The diamond fields from the artisanal miners. So, there were contrasting constructions of legalities and illegalities, where we don't have a law that recognizes artisanal mining, so the people who were caught mining there were treated with extreme brutality. That's what got me involved in the Marange story. There was a massacre that took place in November 2008, where about 200, at least 200 miners were killed within a space of five weeks, and thousands of women were raped, or had other artisanal miners forced on them.

0:39:28.5 FM: And followed weeks of horrific stories of torture and death. So, the Kimberley Process ended up intervening in 2009, I think it was about seven months after the massacre had taken place. They sent a fact-finding mission, which recommended suspension of Zimbabwe from selling diamonds under the KP certificates. This suspension was lifted in 2011, under the chairmanship of the Democratic Republic of Congo. And then, since then, the situation has kind of evolved, whereby there's been a strong narrative as well from the government to say, we have attended to the problems in Marange. But the situation on the ground points to a completely different picture.

0:40:35.9 FM: I will talk about four things briefly. The first one is the general situation in Marange, whereby government declared parts of Marange which surround the diamond fields to be protected areas. There is a law that is called the Protected Places and Areas Act, where once that area has been declared a protected area, it comes under the control of security forces. So, you've got the army in Marange, you've got the police, you've got other security agents stationed in Marange, living together with the community. And that brings excess baggage in terms of human rights violations. When soldiers live in the villages, you can know what happens between soldiers and civilians when they live together.

0:41:44.8 FM: It is also part of that community from the rest of the country, whereby if anyone wants to go to Marange to visit a relative, a friend, or whatever, you need special clearance from home affairs. And it makes life very difficult, especially in times of sickness, in times of death, let alone just getting together as family and as communities. So, they are completely cut off from the rest of the country. And, of course, their freedom of movement, association, assembly has been with broad reason because they are found in places which are rich in diamonds.

0:42:27.9 FM: The other problem is human rights violations, that's the direct violence which the artisanal miners are calling out first to this day. There are two large-scale companies operating in Marange. One is called Anjin. It's a partnership with a Chinese company called Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Group. In partnership with the Zimbabwe Defense Industries, which is a subsidiary of the Zimbabwe National Army, they formed what is called Anjin. Then there is one also called the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company, which is wholly owned by the States. So, the diamond-rich area of Marange is under these two companies.

0:43:22.6 FM: But at the same time, what we have in Marange are largely alluvial diamonds, though now they've also moved to the conglomerates, where they are now digging deeper into the ground. But the alluvial diamonds are spread over a land of about 150,000 hectares, so it's not possible to bring that whole area under the security forces. Usually, when the artisanal miners are the ones who lead in diamond exploration in Marange, when they find a place, they start digging, the two companies are always chasing where the artisanal miners are. Whenever they find artisanal miners gathered for a week or more, they know that there is something. Then they come with their guns, with their dogs, and they chase them away, and they take over that area. That's how diamond mining in Marange has been expanding. It is not through the exploration work by the companies, it is through the exploration work by the artisanal miners.

0:44:30.3 FM: So now they've been chased further down to the outskirts of the diamond mining zone, near what is called the Odzi River. That's where they are mining there, but still they are raided frequently. If they are caught, sometimes they are handcuffed and the dogs are set on them. Sometimes this has ended in fatalities, sometimes people have been severely injured. We used to have a facility where we would work with a doctor's organization, where we would take those artisanal miners to for treatment, because they fear going to hospital. If they go to hospital with severe injuries, they are asked to produce police reports. And if the police are the perpetrators of the violence, obviously the artisanal miners would rather stay at home and treat themselves using traditional medicine or whatever.

0:45:35.3 FM: But that facility has ended, so now we are very concerned because we don't know where the artisanal miners are getting help. But just before this call, I just had a call with someone in the community who confirmed that the abuses are continuing, even though they've significantly gone down compared to, say, 10 years back. But we are still concerned that the use of torture is still an acceptable practice in Marange. The other challenge we have is poverty. The Marange community in general is a dry area. It's found in natural region 4 and 5. There is a screaming poverty in that community. Diamond wealth has not been invested back in the community. My major concern, someone who has been working on the sector and focusing on Marange, is the use of propaganda by the government and the companies. They've got a well-oiled propaganda machinery, where they want the world to believe that a lot of work has been done to improve the lives of the people in Marange.

0:47:00.6 FM: But when you get to the ground, you'll be surprised that they could not construct even a single kilometer of roads. I'm talking even of dusty, dirty roads. We are not even talking of tarred roads. The Marange clinic, which deals with the health of the community, has not been impacted by diamond mining. The facilities are dilapidated. I can tell you that one of the staff members' houses that we entered is gory. The pictures are gory. And if they wanna close the tap of water, they have to pick a big rock and place it there to stop the water from flowing. If you wanna fetch water, you lift that rock. That's how terrible the conditions are. No medication, nothing.

0:48:00.5 FM: Now, of course, we are having this cyclone-induced drought. That has increased the suffering in the Marange community. And also, those who may wanna help, they stay away from Marange because the layers of protocols, of documentation, of permissions they need to obtain in order to go to Marange are just too much. So a lot will stay away. We have also tried to go to humanitarian organizations to say, please, can you help? Especially the more than 1,300 families that were displaced from Marange, Arda Transau, without compensation. There is also famine in that particular area where, again, there's a problem in terms of reaching to them.

0:48:55.2 FM: And then the CSR, sometimes they do CSR, but it's exaggerated. If they say they spent $10,000, it will be $500,000 that they bought, that they've invested in the community. Right now, the companies at CDC, we have been putting pressure that you need also to invest your profits in the community. So they said we are going to give 1.2 million dividends to the community. But they went on to select two people from the community whom they said we are going to give them the 1.2 million. We have found that even those two people are simply being used, their names are simply being used, but the money never left, it's at CDC. Some of the few projects they've done, like borehole drilling, they inflated the cost. An ordinary borehole cost about $1,700, but they've inflated the cost to about $20,000 per borehole to justify that we had spent 1.2 million.

0:50:11.8 FM: And finally, I would also talk about valuation of diamonds. Zimbabwe's diamonds are leaving the country almost for nothing. And the United Arab Emirates is the destination of Zimbabwe's diamonds. We are told that the diamonds are poor quality, they cost about $42 per carat, but we all know that's not true because in 2018 when those diamonds were sold in Antwerp, the companies tried to sabotage that tender because they were preferring the murky waters of Dubai. So they sent broken pieces, dirty diamonds to undermine that tender, but still the diamonds fetched $79 per carat. And then they started fighting again that we don't wanna send our diamonds to Antwerp because the EU had imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe, we want to go back to Dubai.

0:51:19.3 FM: I think they got their way, even though they're still selling somehow to Antwerp here and there, but I think 90% of Zimbabwe's diamonds are going to Dubai. And they never talk about the gem quality. We know that 10% of the diamonds that come out of Marange are gem quality. But Zimbabwe does not declare the gems, they only talk about industrial diamonds. So those are the issues. I don't have anything to add, but those are the concerns that we have. Thank you so much, Christina, again.

0:52:00.4 CM: Thank you. Those are a lot of concerns. I'm not even quite sure what to say, always when we get into the specifics of how people are actually being affected and the way individuals are being exploited across entire communities. And then there's always the challenge of the juxtaposition against the beautiful imagery of beautiful people wearing beautiful jewelry with lots of diamonds. The contrast when you put the two next to each other, it must be so difficult for communities. So let's bring both you and Hans back together as we start to pull this narrative together as we close out the hour, because believe it or not, we're already there. And that is the thing that I'd like to sort of bring to the fore from both of you is what are the messages that the members of the KP Civil Society Coalition or the individuals in the artisanal mining communities or Farai in the communities in Marange that you're describing? What is it that they are really asking of the diamond industry and the jewelry sector where they look and see this contrasting image to what their life represents? What are they asking for? So maybe Hans, you could give a broad and then Farai, if there's something specific you wanna add to that.

0:53:52.1 HM: Yeah, I think in general, a lot of it comes back to being transparent, honest and open about what it is that the challenges are and how to address them. And I think in the diamond sector, there is some kind of field of tension that complicates being open because there is, of course, this intensive marketing of diamonds as a brand. And that, I think, makes it challenging for us, for organizations, for our partner organizations to read, for instance, when we see reports by the Natural Diamond Council, for instance, how they write about responsible diamond sourcing more or less being a mission accomplished, as if the diamond industry would be the only industry that cracked the code on responsible sourcing. That is, yeah, I think for some offensive, for others, it's just counterproductive. To try and see this, indeed, I think you mentioned it, Christina, in the beginning, as this continuous improvement, it's a vague concept, but at least it gives reason or it's a space within which more still can be done. And I think that is important.

0:55:20.4 HM: And that is something that has, if you look also at how the Kimberley Process has operated, it has been, it has stayed more or less the past 20 years, the same mechanism, and there has been very little incentive to try and make it something adapted to present day realities. And we see that in other, when we look at other minerals and how the space, the responsible sourcing space around them works, there has been more dynamism, I think, to try and set up new initiatives. It's all challenging. But at least there have been different things that have tried. In the diamond industry, I think the main project that has been tried is GemFair. It's very interesting, a good project, but it's a shame that we only have that example, for now.

0:56:16.0 HM: And it would be good to try and see if we can build a space within which we can jointly discuss what other solutions are needed. And I think there, and that's maybe something very concrete for this community, try to make more direct connections between these two ends of the supply chain because we can, yeah, I think we start to understand each other's realities a bit more, but there's still a lot that we can learn from each other by simply having more of these kind of conversations or getting personal connections that can also help to have updates. Based on the work we've done in the past, now and then we check back in with each other and I can get an update on how things stand on your end and what the main issues are on your radar and vice versa. And I think that is really helpful and it would be very good if we could expand that to involve more people. So yeah, that would be my answer to the question.

0:57:12.0 CM: Thanks, Hans.

0:57:16.3 FM: Thank you so much, Hans, and I'm happy to see Jeff is also on the call. Yeah, we've been in the struggle for a long time together. There are two points that I just wanna flag. First one, the Marange community has been asking for a concession for the community, which they operate. And I'm very much reliably informed that our president is amenable to that idea. And conversations have been at an advanced stage to ensure that the community concession is operational. ZCDC had offered to use its equipment to mine in the community concession. And I thought that could change the tide in terms of the Marange diamond story. The community has also been saying, you are saying you are on sanctions and you cannot sell diamonds in certain countries. But we, the Marange community, are not under sanctions. Give us our concession. We mine our diamonds. We market our diamonds on our own. And I'm sure all of you on this platform, you will be very happy to buy diamonds straight from the community because you will know that you are making a difference by supporting a community initiative.

0:59:04.3 FM: I think this is something which we may need to continue pushing and engaging to make sure that the community gets what they want, similar to the Royal Bafokeng Nation of South Africa. They are into platinum but I think their model is proved to work. There is a caveat to that, of course, whereby this topic of inclusion and exclusion can come up and the manipulation of the community by powerful people who may also come down from the top to the community level and hijack those initiatives. But otherwise, it's a brilliant initiative and I'm happy that President seem to be supporting that idea. The second thing is about formalizing artisanal mining. The 15 years I've monitored Marange have proved to me that violence is not enough to keep artisanal miners out of the diamond fields. We are a country where unemployment rate is very high. Our local currency is ineffective.

1:00:20.3 FM: The only currency that people are craving for is the United States dollar and diamonds gives them an assurance that if I find a carat, I will sell it and get US dollars. So governments just need to come to this reality that violence is not going to solve the problem. Rather, they need a more creative approach to create space for these artisanal miners to mine and they can even sell those diamonds to the government itself, provided they also offer competitive prices. So those are my two suggestions, which I think can be way forward in terms of solving this problem. Thank you.

1:01:07.4 CE: Thank you so much, Farai. I just wanted to say one thing that something that never ceases to amaze me is how many of the issues that both Farai and Hans have suggested today are found across cultures and across countries in the extractive industries in general. So it's still incredible that the fundamentals are not met and there's collective struggle in the extractive industry. So thank you so much for yet again reminding us of the fundamentals.

1:01:44.5 FM: Thank you, Cecilia.

1:01:47.8 Ana Brazaitytė: Yeah, I wanted to say thank you as well. And one wrap up thought would be for us as independent jewelers and those of us who work at jewelry companies as well. I think this has just been a good reminder to be really careful with the claims that we make about our products so that we don't end up further harming communities by making claims that seem like things have been fixed, like Hans mentioned, for example, including claims around conflict-free. And we have to continue to work to get more and more specific with our origin information. It was mentioned in the chat that there's not really a consensus on what origin means in the industry and many assume that to be country of origin. But what we really are looking for when we talk about origin is the mine, so that we can know the direct impacts that the communities there face. So it's just the reminder to continue to work to get more specific with that information so that we can continue to listen to the needs of the communities that are directly impacted by the production of our gemstones.

1:03:05.9 CM: So note to end on, we hope to see you on November 8th for our next Living Room session. Huge gratitude to Hans and Farai for joining us from late on a Friday in your worlds right now. And for a Friday sacrifice is one thing, but all of your work, research, information, willingness to be brave. Thank you.

1:03:36.1 CE: Thank you all for joining us today.

1:03:37.8 Speaker 8: Thank you all.

1:03:38.8 CE: Thank you, Hans and Farai again.

1:03:41.3 FM: Thank you so much. Bye.

1:03:42.1 CM: Bye.

1:03:44.5 CE: Take care, everyone. Happy weekend.

1:03:45.3 HM: Yeah, you too. Bye-bye.