PAC Estimates Conflict Diamonds at 0.1%-0.2% of Trade

What’s the real percentage of conflict diamonds out there? According to Partnership Africa Canada (PAC), and based on the official UN definition, the value of conflict diamonds is estimated at $9 to $23 million, which constitutes 0.1 to 0.2 percent of total rough diamond trade.

PAC is responding to the war of percentages going on and it uses the UN definition to reach its conclusion, which means it excluded police, army, and gang violence in countries at peace, and also excluded the larger and less distinct category of illicit diamonds.

The following were its findings:

“The Kimberley Process and the diamond industry have used a figure of 4 percent since the KP began negotiations. This was based on an estimate in 1999 of $150 million from Angola, $70 million from Sierra Leone, and $35 million from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Assuming these estimates were correct (and there is no reason to doubt them), this represented a percentage of rough production value that year ($6.8 billion) of 3.7 percent.

Earlier, however, according to UN figures, in 1996 and 1997, Angola’s rebel movement UNITA alone had exported as much as $700 million annually (although during some of this period there was an official ceasefire). This was at a time when UNITA controlled much more of Angola’s diamond mining areas than they did by 1999. This would have represented 10% of world production. Even if it was half of this number, it would have brought the global total to $400 million, or about 7 percent. If the larger UN figure was accurate, the total would have been closer, with Sierra Leone and DRC thrown in, to $800 million, representing 12-14 percent of rough production value at the time. At its worst, therefore, and using consistent definitions and figures, conflict diamonds represented between 7 percent and 14 percent of total world diamond production during the mid 1990s.

Currently, the UN estimate of conflict diamonds emerging from C?te d’Ivoire in a year – the only country with “official” conflict diamonds – is something between $9 and $23 million. As a percentage of rough production value (estimated in 2005 at $12.67 billion), this represents something between 0.1 percent and 0.2 percent.”