Diamonds: The History of a Cold-Blooded Love Affair

While some diamonds are mined by enthusiastic geologists hoping to discover something big, a large percentage of the miners, especially in Africa, are slaves or child slaves. The majority of miners and diggers in sub-saharan Africa travel long hours to get to their work site, to work for little to no pay in extremely rough conditions. Child labor has been used in the diamond industry for a very long time, especially during wars. Children are considered to be very useful tools to extract diamonds out of narrow pits, because they are the only ones small enough to fit in them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The conditions these slaves are working in are extremely dangerous. There is the possibilty of mudslides, walls collapsing, drowning, among many other devastating accidents.  Many children are kidnapped and taken to these diamond mines. Almost a quarter of miners in Sierra Leone are children, and most of the rest are enslaved adults. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to the Conflict Diamond Statistics in 2012, almost 3 million people suffered a diamond mining related death, and those who were "lucky" got an average of 7 cents a day. The diamonds these slaves are mining are very often illegaly traded to fund conflict war-torn areas, including many parts of Africa. They are also called conflict diamonds, and sometimes referred to as "blood diamonds". 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2003, a government run initiative called the Kimberly Process was first introduced to the idea of these conflict diamonds. The Kimberly Process Certification Scheme imposes requirements on participants to certify that shipments of rough diamonds are conflict free, meaning that they are not used to fund conflicts and wars. This doesn't mean conflict diamonds are not in existence, but the percentage of them had gone down since this has been put into place.