Ethics, ESG & regulation

Conflict diamonds, often called blood diamonds, are rough diamonds that armed groups use to pay for war. The term took hold in the late 1990s, when three wars showed how alluvial diamonds, which can be dug from riverbeds with shovels and sieves, could sustain rebel armies.

In Angola, the UNITA rebel movement earned an estimated US$600–700 million a year from diamonds in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The UN Security Council banned purchases of Angolan diamonds lacking government certificates in June 1998, and Global Witness’s December 1998 report A Rough Trade named the companies and governments involved. In Sierra Leone, the RUF rebel group held diamond areas during a civil war from 1991 to 2002 that killed about 75,000 people and became notorious for the mutilation of civilians. Neighboring Liberia, under President Charles Taylor, traded weapons for RUF diamonds and exported them as its own, and the Security Council banned Liberian rough diamond exports in March 2001. The Special Court for Sierra Leone convicted Taylor in 2012 and sentenced him to 50 years in prison.

NGO campaigns, and later the 2006 film Blood Diamond, made the issue familiar to consumers and pushed producers, traders and governments toward a certification system.

Southern African producers met in Kimberley, South Africa, in May 2000. The UN General Assembly backed a certification scheme that December (resolution 55/56), and the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) was launched at Interlaken, Switzerland, in November 2002 and took effect in 2003. Participants must certify every export of rough diamonds, ship them in tamper-resistant containers, trade only with other participants and share statistics. In 2026 the Process counts 60 participants representing 86 countries, with the EU as one, and India holds the rotating chair. The US implemented the scheme through the Clean Diamond Trade Act of April 25, 2003.

Certificates stop at the rough stage. To carry assurance forward, the World Diamond Council introduced the System of Warranties in 2002: each invoice for rough, polished or set diamonds carries a statement that the goods come from legitimate sources not involved in funding conflict. The council broadened its guidelines in 2021 to cover human and labor rights, corruption and money laundering.

Critics note that the definition covers only diamonds financing rebels against governments, that certificates name countries rather than mines, and that consensus lets any participant block action. Global Witness left the Process in December 2011. At the November 2025 plenary in Dubai, members again failed to widen the definition, split over whether violence by state actors should count.

Diamonds were found at Marange in eastern Zimbabwe in 2006, and a rush of informal diggers followed. In late 2008 the army moved in to take control of the fields; Human Rights Watch documented more than 200 killings, along with torture and forced labor. Because state forces rather than rebels committed the abuses, Marange fell outside the Kimberley Process definition of conflict diamonds.

The Process responded in November 2009 with a joint work plan and a ban on exports from Marange alone, then allowed supervised sales in 2010. At its Kinshasa plenary in November 2011 it authorized exports from Marange mines. The United States had placed Zimbabwe’s state mining and mineral-marketing corporations under sanctions in 2008 and added two Marange mining companies in December 2011. The EU lifted its sanctions on the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation in September 2013. Washington ended its Zimbabwe sanctions program in March 2024, replacing it with targeted designations under its Global Magnitsky program.

Local communities bore lasting costs. About 1,000 families were relocated to Arda Transau, a farm near Mutare, where promised schools, clinics and water supplies largely failed to appear, and researchers reported pollution of the Save and Odzi rivers. In 2016 the government merged the mining companies into a single state firm, the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company.

Myanmar supplies most of the world’s fine jadeite, from Hpakant in Kachin State, and many of its most valued rubies, from the Mogok valley. For decades revenue from these stones flowed to military governments and their business allies, while conflict between the army and the Kachin Independence Army affected the jade areas.

The United States responded with the Tom Lantos Block Burmese JADE Act, signed on July 29, 2008. It banned imports of jadeite and rubies mined in Burma, and jewelry containing them, even when the stones had been cut or set in another country, closing the route by which rubies cut in Thailand had entered the US market. President Obama lifted the ban on October 7, 2016, with Executive Order 13742, citing the country’s democratic transition.

After the military coup of February 2021, the US Treasury sanctioned the state-owned Myanma Gems Enterprise on April 8, 2021, calling gemstones a key economic resource for the regime; the UK and the EU followed in May and June. These designations block dealings with the enterprise but are not import bans, so campaigners have pressed for renewed restrictions on stones of Myanmar origin. Conditions in the mines remain deadly: on July 2, 2020, a waste heap at Hpakant collapsed into a lake and killed more than 170 informal jade pickers.

Russia’s state-controlled Alrosa is the world’s largest diamond miner by volume. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States banned imports of Russian non-industrial diamonds in March 2022 and sanctioned Alrosa in April 2022. G7 leaders agreed on December 6, 2023 to restrict Russian diamonds, and the EU’s 12th sanctions package, adopted on December 18, set the timetable. Diamonds mined in, processed in or exported from Russia were banned from January 1, 2024. Russian diamonds cut in third countries were banned from March 1, 2024 for stones of 1.0 ct and above, and from September 1, 2024 for stones of 0.5 ct and above. The US applied the same thresholds.

A polished diamond carries no reliable marker of its mine, so enforcement rests on documents. The G7 planned a traceability-based verification system, and a certification node opened in Antwerp in March 2024 to issue G7 certificates for non-Russian rough. The EU postponed a mandatory digital traceability platform twice, to March 2025 and then January 2026, and finally did not impose it. Since March 1, 2025, Kimberley certificates for rough entering the EU must name the actual countries of origin rather than “mixed”. Since January 1, 2026, importers of natural polished diamonds of 0.5 ct and above must file a due diligence statement declaring non-Russian origin.

As of mid-2026 the measures remained in force, although US peace proposals in late 2025 raised the prospect of phased sanctions relief.

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) means digging with hand tools or simple machines, mostly outside formal regulation. It produces much of the world’s colored gemstones and a significant share of alluvial diamonds. A 2020 World Bank-supported report on the sector estimated that about 44 million people work directly in ASM across some 80 countries, with about 90 percent of the activity informal. Pit collapses, flooding and dust are constant hazards.

Children work in some of these mines. The ILO and UNICEF estimated that 138 million children were in child labor worldwide in 2024, and ILO Convention 182 (1999) counts hazardous work, including most mining, among the worst forms to be eliminated. Human Rights Watch’s 2018 report The Hidden Cost of Jewelry documented hazardous child labor in artisanal gold and diamond mining and found that almost none of 13 major jewelry and watch companies could name the mines that supplied all their gold and diamonds.

Community effects cut both ways. Mining brings wages, roads and royalties, but also displacement, rushes that overwhelm local services, and disputes over land. Formalization programs try to keep the income while reducing harm. De Beers’ GemFair, launched in Sierra Leone in 2018, buys diamonds from registered artisanal sites that meet its standards, and Pact’s Moyo Gems, begun in Tanzania in 2019, connects women miners with traders under responsible-sourcing rules.

Large diamond and colored-stone mines move vast volumes of rock, burn diesel, draw water and leave pits and tailings that must be rehabilitated. Poorly regulated operations can pollute rivers, as reported downstream of Marange, and unstable waste heaps have killed hundreds of workers at Hpakant. Artisanal pits left open degrade farmland unless they are backfilled.

Laboratory-grown diamonds avoid excavation but use large amounts of electricity, whether made in high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) presses or chemical vapor deposition (CVD) reactors. Their carbon footprint therefore depends mainly on the power supply, and much production is in China and India, where coal generates a large share of electricity. Comparisons are contested. A 2019 study by Trucost, part of S&P Global, commissioned by the miners’ Diamond Producers Association, estimated 160 kg of CO₂ per polished carat for mined diamonds and 511 kg for lab-grown, figures that lab-grown producers disputed.

Regulators have challenged vague green claims. In 2019 the US Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters to eight jewelry companies and said unqualified terms such as “eco-friendly” or “sustainable” need substantiation. In the EU, Directive (EU) 2024/825 bans generic environmental claims that sellers cannot prove, with national rules applying from September 27, 2026.

The OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas is the reference framework behind most sourcing rules. Adopted through an OECD Council recommendation in 2011 and now in its third edition (2016), it applies to mineral supply chains generally and sets out five steps: build management systems, identify and assess risks, respond to them, commission independent third-party audits, and report publicly. Its model supply-chain policy lists abuses a company should not tolerate, including forced and child labor, support for armed groups, bribery and money laundering. The binding EU Conflict Minerals Regulation applies this approach to tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold, but not to gemstones.

The Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), founded in 2005 by 14 organizations including Cartier, De Beers, Tiffany & Co. and Rio Tinto, turns such principles into certifiable standards. Members must be audited against its Code of Practices, first issued in 2009 and revised in 2013, 2019 and 2024. A Chain of Custody standard followed in 2012, colored gemstones and silver came into scope in 2019, and a Laboratory Grown Material Standard was added in 2025. By 2025 the council had more than 2,000 member companies.

Critics, including Human Rights Watch, argue that industry-run certification audits company systems more than conditions at mines, and that it lets members claim responsible sourcing without disclosing their suppliers.

Traceability systems try to link a finished stone to its source. The best known for diamonds is Tracr, a blockchain platform developed by De Beers that began as a research project in 2018 and was deployed at scale in 2022, when De Beers said it could register a million diamonds a week. Each rough diamond is registered at the start, and later owners add records as it is cut and sold. A blockchain shows only that records were not altered after entry; it cannot prove the first entry was true or that a stone was not swapped outside the system.

Laboratory origin determination works differently. Labs such as Gübelin, SSEF and GIA study inclusions and trace-element chemistry to give an opinion on where a ruby, sapphire or emerald formed. The result can move prices sharply, but it remains an expert opinion rather than proof. Physical tagging adds another layer: Gübelin's Provenance Proof program applies DNA-based tracers to rough stones, beginning with the Emerald Paternity Test, and runs a separate blockchain that Gemfields adopted for ruby and emerald production in late 2019.

Fairtrade certification exists for gold but not for gemstones. The Responsible Jewellery Council's chain-of-custody standard covers gold, silver and platinum group metals, not diamonds or colored stones. The table below sets out the steps a stone passes through as of 2026 and the points where the chain breaks.