WASHINGTON — The State Department said Thursday that the U.S. will take the helm of the Kimberley Process, an international body formed in 2003 to break the link between the sale of rough diamonds and armed conflict.
Gillian Milovanovic has been named as chair of the Kimberley Process, the first woman to serve in that capacity. She was previously ambassador to Mali and Macedonia and has held senior positions at U.S. embassies in South Africa, Botswana and Belgium.
The Kimberley Process is a certification-of-origin system that links the governments of 76 diamond-producing and processing countries together with the diamond industry and civil society. It was established after links were made to what came to be termed “blood diamonds” that were used to fund wars in Sierra Leone, Angola and other regions of the world. Its main goal is to provide certification and proof to consumers that the diamonds they purchase were not used to fund violence.
However, the Kimberley Process suffered a setback in December when Global Witness, a key human rights watchdog group, left the body, alleging that the diamond industry’s system lacks independent verification after nine years of work and does not “address the clear links between diamonds, violence and tyranny,” according to a statement on the group’s Web site.