My aversion to the best friend of every woman..

"Diamonds are forever" it is often said. But lives are not.
We must spare people the ordeal of war, mutilations and death for the sake of conflict diamonds."

- Martin Chungong Ayafor, Chairman of the Sierra Leone Panel of Experts

The other day, my friend who just got engaged, was inquiring about the price of a diamond ring at Macy's. He sure earned more than a few appreciative glances from the women around him. After all, the Diamond is the woman's best friend and here was a guy, who wanted nothing but the best that Macy's had to offer, to take home to his beloved. After an hour of shifting thru stones, one of them finally managed to catch his eye. He looked at my face for telltale signs of appreciation, which I duly showered on him, without any inhibition. Hell, my stomach didn't really care about stones and all it needed was some food(which btw, I could only dream of, until I got casanova out of the women's section and to the nearest taco).

Later on the way back home, he made a casual point that very soon, the tables would be turned and I would be the one doing the stone sifting at Kay's or Macy's. I laughed it off but was totally confused. Would I ever do it ?

I have this big aversion for a diamond beacause I feel that every buyer is indirectly contributing to destroying a life, far away on another part of the world.

Approx 49% of the world's diamonds ,originate from the African continent - notably Sierra Leone, Angola and Congo. These stones are then sent off to the international trading centers, notably Antwerp, where they are sold off. They then undergo a process of cutting and polishing in smaller centers in Asia - notably India(Gujarat), Thailand, China etc, before they hit the display shelf.

But what about the real story of a diamond ? Does a buyer ever care about the impoverished hands of the child slaves that first sifted and picked the diamond from a pile of dirt. Do they even know that the hands who transform the diamond from dirty uncut stones into a thing of beauty that melts a woman's heart, are those of a child, who has lost out on his right to education ? Does anyone ever realize that countless people have lost their lives, in another part of the world, because there is a booming market for a shiny stone ?



From the 1990's until the early 2000's, the extraction of two-third's of the diamonds in Africa were controlled by insurgents and rebel groups. Notably the RUF and the UNITA. It took more than a decade for the governments around the world to take action and come up with the conflict diamond campaign. The Kimberley certification scheme, which was signed subsequently, was made to stop the blood diamonds or the conflict diamonds from entering the market and to assure the buyers that the ones that they purchase don't have a bloody history to them.

Alls well ? Unfortunately NO. The Kimberley process still has got a number of loopholes. It still manages to list the Diamonds from Zimbabwe, as "conflict free" inspite of the fact that the Zimbabwean military under President Robert Mugabe is using forced labor, murder, and torture to keep production going. It also doesn't do anything to prevent the use of child labour in the third world countries, where the stones are cut and polished.



While sipping a coffee at Starbucks, I pictured myself in the shoes of a guy, trying to impress the woman of his dreams. Would I go ahead and get the stone or would I try to drill my thoughts into her ? Option 2 certainly seemed the more sensible one but I have heard gruesome stories of hubbies being tortured and subjected to military diets involving leafy vegetables by their spouses. Their crime being that they watched a certain Di Caprio movie and said no to buying a diamond.

My decision. This one is a no brainer. I hate leafy vegetables. PERIOD.