Zimbabwe is supposedly enjoying political stability under the coalition government formed in 2008. However, Unreported World finds a country still gripped by terror and violence. Reporter Ramita Navai and director Alex Nott film undercover to investigate claims that gems from one of the world’s biggest diamond fields are being used by Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF [...]
De Beers has been declared the Overall Winner in the ACCA South Africa Sustainability Reporting Awards for its Report to Society 2009. This is the third consecutive year that the Report to Society has been recognised for such an Award, but this time De Beers was placed in a category of its own as ACCA [...]
Well over a year has passed since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited eastern Congo, generating high expectations for the U.S. response to the long war there. In the year since, the links between the conflict and the illicit trade in minerals – which we all help perpetuate through our electronics purchases – is now [...]
Declaring the situation in Cote d’Ivoire a continuing threat to international peace, the Security Council today extended until the end of next April the weapons, financial and travel sanctions on a country split between a Government-controlled south and rebel-held north by civil war in 2002. In a unanimously adopted resolution, the 15-member body, which last [...]
Gem Stone King, an e-commerce retailer based in New York City, has reached a milestone 100,000 positive feedback rating on eBay today. Their rating of 99.9% positive feedback reflects comments left by satisfied jewelry buyers since they began selling on eBay in 2000. In the past 12 months alone they have received over 70,000 feedback [...]
In order to decrease violence fueled by the global trade in conflict minerals, Congo’s recent ban on mineral exports must be accompanied by long-term efforts to reform the trade, including a certification process, says the Enough Project. Last week, President Joseph Kabila announced a mineral export ban on the conflict-ridden and mineral-rich Walikale territory in [...]
Global Witness welcomes the confirmation, in a landmark UN report published today, of strong links between the activities of brutal armed groups and the trade in minerals and timber in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Global Witness has been campaigning for over 10 years on the Congo conflict, and strongly backs the UN’s call for [...]
The Board of Trustee’s of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund (NMCF) has completed a process of investigation and discussions with Mr Jeremy Ractliffe, its former Chief Executive Officer, concerning three uncut diamonds he had received on the Blue Train from Ms Naomi Campbell in 1997 and kept in his possession until they were handed over [...]
Zimbabwe’s National Association of Non Governmental Organisations (Nango) says it is not moved by statements by Minister of Mines and Mining Development, Obert Mpofu, over Nango’s nomination of Farai Maguwu as the Kimberley Process local focal point person. Nango acting chief executive officer, Machinda Marongwe this week said the nomination of Maguwu would stand despite [...]
Today we meet here on a historic occasion for Zimbabwe marking the first public auction of the country’s most valuable mineral, the diamond. Indeed it is historic in that we have managed to satisfy the minimum requirements of the Kimberley Process certification scheme which is the global watchdog in regulating the trade of diamonds. Following [...]
ZANU PF as a party is surprised that there are determined efforts by the private media to personalize, criminalize and tribalize the mining of diamonds at Chiadzwa. For instance, some private papers have consistently portrayed the role of the Minister of Mines and Mining Development in a most negative and personal manner.Minister Mpofu’s laudable efforts [...]
Global Witness’ Background briefing on the trial of Charles Taylor at which Naomi Campbell will testify What happened in Sierra Leone? In 1991, rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) attacked Sierra Leone from Liberia, backed by Charles Taylor, a warlord who later became Liberia’s president. The human cost of the conflict in Sierra Leone [...]