Let’s first take a look at some pendants.

The pendant on the top left is our new 18K White Gold Pavé Diamond Infinity Pendant. The one on the top right is our 18K White Gold Heart Diamond Pendant. Both pendants feature shimmering pavé-set diamonds. They are made of 18K white gold and come gracefully suspended from a delicate cable chain. These pendants, each in their own way, are shaped to convey love and dedication — making them great gifts for Valentine’s Day!

Now let’s take a look at two new engagement ring styles we’re extra excited about. If you’d like to make a proposal on Valentine’s Day — or any other day — these elegant rings are well worth considering.

The top left ring is our Platinum Unity Ring. A variation on the classic solitaire ring, this ring features a split-shank design. Four graceful prongs curve up to support the center gem in a low profile basket setting. The ring on the top right is our Platinum Cherish Ring. This elegant solitaire setting has a delicate band that tapers in toward the center gem. Split-prongs embellish and secure the gem in a low profile basket setting framed by graceful arches.

Both these rings are dazzling, yet practical. Low profile settings are ideal for active lifestyles. These rings ingeniously keep the diamond low and secure while maximizing the glittering diamond surface area that is exposed to the eye. They are each available in your choice of metals.

We’d like to recommend two more of our most romantic styles: our Platinum Celtic Love Knot Ring and our 18K White Gold True Heart Ring. These rings aren’t new to our collection, but they’re Customer Favorites.

See anything you like? For more ideas, visit our home page and browse our collection. To stay up to date on our latest designs, join our community on Facebook. And for personal recommendations from our jewelry specialists, feel free to contact us.  We’d be honored to help you make this a special Valentine’s Day!

Global Witness helped found the Kimberley Process back in 2003. The same year, the group was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for its pioneering work on conflict diamonds. So a sad milestone was reached in December when Global Witness decided it had had enough.  In the wake of the Kimberley Process decision on Zimbabwean diamonds, the group announced that it would no longer continue as a Kimberley Process participant and advisor. Global Witness did not mince words. In a press release, Global Witness founding director Charmian Gooch labeled the Kimberley Process “an accomplice to diamond laundering” and called the certification scheme’s approach to Zimbabwe “an outrage.”

Global Witness’s decision has sent shockwaves throughout the jewelry industry, while earning considerable press attention. Most coverage to date has focused on the consequences for the Kimberley Process itself – specifically, whether the Kimberley Process is coming apart at the seams. The participation of civil society organizations like Global Witness is crucial to the Kimberley Process’s credibility. (Without civil society groups, the Kimberley Process would be composed of only national governments and industry.) Farai Maguwu, a Zimbabwean human rights advocate, explained the impact of Global Witness’s withdrawal to The New York Times. “The Kimberley Process will never be the same,” said Maguwu, whose organization works closely with Brilliant Earth. “A very influential member of the Kimberley Process has cast a vote of no confidence.”

The Kimberley Process has been weakened, perhaps irreparably. But the consequences for the Kimberley Process are less important to us than the consequences for diamond industry reform efforts, as a whole. Evaluated in this light, we think that Global Witness’s withdrawal, on balance, is actually good news. The Kimberley Process has long been weak and ineffectual. With its latest decision to certify Zimbabwean diamonds as “conflict free,” the Kimberley Process may even be doing harm. Working from outside the Kimberley Process, rather trying to fight a hopeless battle within it, Global Witness may gain the freedom it needs to redirect its energies, experiment with new strategies, and have more impact.

We’re especially encouraged by the hints Global Witness has been giving about its future direction – which may place an enhanced emphasis on holding the diamond industry accountable. “Consumers have a right to know what they’re buying, and what was done to obtain it,” stated Gooch, in the press release. “The diamond industry must finally take responsibility for its supply chains and prove that the stones it sells are clean.” Annie Dunnebacke, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, echoed these sentiments.  “The industry taking responsibility and acting on cleaning up the diamond supply chain is really essential here,” she told The New York Times. “They’ve just been saying, ‘We have the Kimberley Process for diamonds, so that’s that — we’ve solved the problem of blood diamonds.’”

We couldn’t have said it better, and we couldn’t agree more. In fact, our recent blog series on the “1% myth” – the misleading notion that conflict diamonds make up less than one percent of the diamond supply – makes some of the same arguments: that the diamond industry isn’t taking responsibility, and that the industry relies on the Kimberley Process to lull consumers into believing that the conflict diamond problem is solved. Furthermore, we’re supportive of any and all efforts to hold the diamond industry accountable. At Brilliant Earth we’re trying to do exactly that – in our case, by educating consumers, by demonstrating that it’s possible for jewelers to provide an ethical product, and by using markets to incentivize change. As Global Witness enters a new era, we’re excited by how closely our visions align.

Last week, even before we’d gotten very far into our blog series, the diamond industry responded to us with a sharply worded message. The message is from the World Diamond Council (WDC), the organization representing most of the major corporations in the diamond industry. We’ve posted the WDC’s message below.

The diamond industry clearly isn’t happy with our blog series. But why is the diamond industry reacting so defensively? We believe it’s because our arguments ring true. We’ve been dismantling the one percent myth, point by point. And if consumers start to realize that they’ve been misled, a lot of them are going to react, with possibly disruptive consequences for the industry.

Before we get to the WDC’s response, let’s review what we’ve said in this blog series so far. We’ve shown how the only diamonds the diamond industry counts as conflict diamonds are the 0.2% of diamonds from Côte d’Ivoire. This statistic excludes diamonds tied to rape, torture, killings, and corruption in Angola and Zimbabwe – diamonds which could soon add up to 20% of the diamond supply, or more. The diamond industry’s statistic also fails to account for problems like child labor and the mass impoverishment of a million diamond diggers in Africa. In addition the one percent myth is an arbitrary statistic. A different statistic could easily be generated showing that almost all diamond jewelry is unethically sourced.

In the WDC’s response to our blog series, it states that it “stands by” the one percent myth. It points out that its definition of “conflict diamond” – a diamond used to finance rebels during a civil war – is the same definition used by the United Nations. Therefore, the WDC suggests, it is fair to tell consumers that the diamond supply is more than 99% conflict free.

The diamond industry misses our point. What we’re saying is that the diamond industry has taken a narrow definition of “conflict diamond” – a definition, incidentally, created eight years ago, in the aftermath of civil wars in Sierra Leone and Angola – and used that definition to avoid proper acknowledgement of the brutal violence that is happening today. It makes no difference to consumers whether diamonds are tainted by abuses by rebel soldiers during a civil war, or by despotic militaries that plunder and torture. And it’s wrong for the diamond industry to hide behind a technical, bureaucratic definition that produces a misleading statistic.

Furthermore, if we’re going to look to governmental sources of authority for definitions, a good place to start would be with the United States government. Because Zimbabwean diamonds support one of the most oppressive and ruthless governments on earth, the U.S. government maintains sanctions against the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation, the corrupt state entity that runs Zimbabwe’s diamond trade. (Unfortunately, the diamond trade is so haphazard and lacking in transparency that these sanctions don’t prevent Zimbabwean diamonds from reaching U.S. consumers.) Thus, the U.S. government considers Zimbabwean diamonds to be too tainted by violence and corruption to be sold to U.S. consumers. In other words, the U.S. government considers Zimbabwean diamonds to be blood diamonds.

The diamond industry needs to explain: Why does it adopt lower standards than the ones used by the U.S. government? And why is it not misleading to tell American consumers that the diamond supply is more than 99% conflict free, when the U.S. government believes that Zimbabwean diamonds – which could soon make up 10% to 15% of the diamond supply – are tainted and should be banned?

As far as international organizations are concerned, we should point out that Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s President, is widely considered a possible target for prosecution by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. If and when Mugabe and Zimbabwe’s generals are eventually rounded up and tried for their crimes, including crimes in Zimbabwe’s diamond fields, the diamond industry is going to look extremely foolish for having vouched for Zimbabwean diamonds.

Strangely, the WDC considers the Kimberley Process’s failures in Zimbabwe to have been a big success. The WDC states that through the Kimberley Process, it pushed for a halt to exports “until the situation changed on the ground.” This summation of what happened in Zimbabwe, again, is completely misleading.

True, we do not know of any large-scale massacres lately – such as in 2008, when the Zimbabwean military flew helicopters into the diamond fields and shot live ammunition down at diamond miners, killing an estimated 200 miners. But the military still patrols the diamond fields and even runs camps where diamond miners are tortured and raped. Robert Mugabe’s political party, Zanu-PF, is looting Zimbabwe’s diamonds, entrenching a despotic regime that has caused widespread suffering and misery. And the full extent of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe’s diamond fields – both ongoing and past – is not known, because the diamond fields are heavily guarded by Zimbabwean troops.

Despite Zimbabwe’s ongoing non-compliance with basic human rights standards, the WDC supports a recent decision by the Kimberley Process to lift the partial ban on Zimbabwean diamond exports and grant “conflict free” certification to Zimbabwean diamonds. Such a decision helps preserve the 1% myth, but it only prolongs the agony of Zimbabwe’s diamond miners and the Zimbabwean people under Mugabe.

In another of its main points, the WDC criticizes Brilliant Earth for following an “exclusionary diamond acquisition strategy.” The WDC argues that diamonds from countries such as Botswana and Namibia contribute to the economies of those countries and that Brilliant Earth’s “implied boycott” of African diamonds contributes to problems such as lack of access health care, housing, education, infrastructure, and good jobs.

This argument is completely off base. At Brilliant Earth, we offer diamonds not just from Canada, but from Namibia and Botswana as well. We agree that diamonds make a positive contribution to economic development in Botswana and Namibia. That’s why we are proud to offer diamonds from both these countries.

Where we disagree with the WDC is on how to best help the people who live in countries where diamonds are a curse, rather than a blessing. It is our firm belief that telling consumers the truth is the best way to generate the political momentum needed for major changes in how diamonds are mined. However, the WDC seems to think that it is defensible to tell consumers that the diamond supply is more than 99% conflict free – which has the effect of blunting consumer pressure for changes that could address problems like violence and poverty.

In sum, we believe it is the WDC, not Brilliant Earth, that is putting profits ahead of people when it tells consumers that the diamond supply is more than 99% conflict free.

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Below, please find the WDC’s response to our blog series:

DEBUNKING THE WORLD DIAMOND COUNCIL’S DEBUNKERS

The Brilliant Earth Blog attacks a statistic presented by the World Diamond Council, which is that considerably less than 1 percent of the rough diamonds traded today can be qualified as conflict diamonds. Such assaults on the reputation and motives of the diamond industry have become standard fair at the start of any shopping season, and frequently one may surmise that they are meant to serve the specific interests of the organization that is carrying them out. For its part Brilliant Earth is a jewelry retailer selling items including diamonds that it ensures its customers are “conflict free,” because they are sourced in Canada.

On its blog, Brilliant Earth criticizes the diamond industry for defining conflict diamonds “in the narrowest of terms,” because it says the industry insists that they only include merchandise that is “used by a rebel group to finance a civil war against a legitimate government.” For the record, this definition was devised by governments and endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly, which in its resolution calling for an end to the trade in conflict diamonds in January 2011 defined them as “rough diamonds which are used by rebel movements to finance their military activities, including attempts to undermine or overthrow legitimate governments.”

The World Diamond Council stands by its statement that only a small fraction of 1 percent of the rough diamonds sold today can be qualified as conflict diamonds. But at the same time the WDC does not contend that perfect conditions exist in all the countries and regions in which rough diamonds are mined. Violence and oppression certainly do occur, but rarely are they the only problems that ordinary people need to cope with. So are poverty, hunger, a lack of access to proper health care and education, insufficient housing, poor infrastructure, a shortage of jobs and minimal economic opportunity.

Brilliant Earth assures its customers that its diamonds are “conflict free” because they are exclusively Canadian. The jewelry retailer also states on its website that “5 percent of its profits are donated to Africa.” That is commendable, but for the millions of Africans, who depend on the diamond industry for their livelihood, it will be regarded merely as compensation for the possible consequence of Brilliant Earth’s implied boycott of the diamonds they mine.

The position of the World Diamond Council, is that while we have to work tirelessly to improve the human rights situation in the areas that diamonds are produced, at the same time we need to ensure that the revenues generated by diamond mining and processing serve to bring about positive economic development and social change. African success stories, like Botswana and Namibia, are good proof of this approach. Their situations would have been greatly different should the entire jewelry industry have followed Brilliant Earth’s exclusionary diamond acquisition strategy.

That is not to say that we should tolerate violence and oppression. As was most recently demonstrated concerning diamond from the Marange region of Zimbabwe, the World Diamond Council, through its involvement in the Kimberley Process, did not limit its attention only on goods sourced in regions caught up in a civil war. Even though there was no civil war in Zimbabwe the WDC pushed successfully for a halt to exports until the situation changed on the ground.

The recently concluded Kinshasa agreement, which the WDC supports, allows for the export of diamonds from three mines in the Marange region which are judged to meet Kimberley Process standards. There have been critics of the agreement, but it is worth noting that, after years of international boycotts and sanctions, the KP is the only organization that managed to address both human rights violations directly in Zimbabwe and also affect the way in which its government behaves.

We would suggest that, if there is a myth, it is the one of the industry’s alleged indifference to the plight of the people of Africa.

In prior blogs, we’ve shown how the only diamonds that the diamond industry counts as conflict diamonds are those from Cote d’Ivoire, a small country in West Africa that produces 0.2% of the world’s diamonds. Missing from this count are diamonds from Angola and Zimbabwe – diamonds which are tainted by killings, torture, and rape. Together, these two countries could soon produce 20% of the diamond supply. We’ve also highlighted how the diamond industry doesn’t count diamonds tied to other serious human rights abuses – such as child labor and the mass impoverishment of a million diamond diggers.

Unfortunately, when jewelry consumers go shopping, they are frequently told that the diamond supply, thanks to the Kimberley Process, is now more than 99% conflict free. Little extra explanation is provided, leaving consumers to assume that serious human rights violations have been rooted out of the diamond supply. This practice can’t go on. We believe that if the diamond industry is going to use any statistic purporting to describe ethical conditions in diamond mining, it has a responsibility to include the concerns we’ve just highlighted.

How might it do this? One approach would be to raise the percentage of conflict diamonds it publicizes to a more realistic level – at minimum, including diamonds from Angola and Zimbabwe. Or, it might be more helpful and accurate to try entirely different statistical approaches as a proxy for ethical conditions in diamond mining.

So far we’ve been calculating the percentage of conflict diamonds by value. That is, we’ve been taking the value of certain rough diamonds and comparing it to the value of all the rough diamonds being produced every year, according to Kimberley Process statistics. But since every diamond is different in terms of size and value, we’d get different results if we calculated our percentages by carat weight, rather than value. Zimbabwe, for instance, last year officially exported 3.0% of the world’s diamonds by value, but 6.6% by carat weight.

Furthermore, all our percentages thus far have focused on diamonds. But instead of calculating the percentage of diamonds tied to violence and exploitation, why not calculate the percentage of people working in diamond mining who are exploited? We don’t have accurate statistics on hand, but we’re willing to estimate that the one million diamond diggers in Africa earning less than $1 a day make up more than 50% of Africa’s diamond miners.

Another helpful type of statistic for consumers might focus less on diamonds, and more on diamond jewelry items as a whole. For instance, to what extent are diamond rings being responsibly produced? Any such statistic would need to evaluate all stages of the jewelry production process, as well as the source of the precious metals in the jewelry item. We haven’t done such a survey ourselves, but our experience suggests that most jewelry manufacturers today aren’t creating products free from worker and environmental exploitation. Indeed, any jewelry item made from newly-mined gold, rather than recycled gold or fair trade gold, is likely causing unnecessary environmental harm.

Surely, any of these statistical approaches would be preferable to telling consumers that the diamond supply is 99.8% conflict free – when, in fact, large portions of the diamond supply have histories linked to killings, torture, and rape. We believe that the diamond industry’s statistic is arbitrary, misleading, and entirely unhelpful to consumers trying to make an ethical diamond purchase. But short of revising the statistic, there is an easier step that the World Diamond Council (WDC), the group representing the global diamond industry, can take immediately: simply, stop promoting the statistic altogether.

We’re doubtful that the WDC will do this, however. For years the diamond industry has used the 1% myth to reassure consumers that the diamond supply is basically ethical. The 1% myth, we suspect, has taken on such a life of its own that the diamond industry is now afraid to abandon it. How do we know?

For one, the diamond industry has stuck by the 1% myth even in the wake of grave human rights violations – including torture, rape, killings, and the forced labor of adults and children – in Zimbabwe’s diamond fields. (Zimbabwe is so rich in diamonds that it could easily produce 10% to 15% of the world diamond supply.) If the diamond industry had any intention of letting go of the 1% myth based on Zimbabwean diamonds alone, it could have done so several years ago, when Zimbabwean diamonds first became embroiled in controversy.

Instead, the diamond industry has never retreated from the 1% myth – even in 2009, when the Kimberley Process, the international diamond certification scheme, itself refused to grant “conflict free” certification to Zimbabwean diamonds. Furthermore, when the Kimberley Process recently decided to restore that certification, the diamond industry threw its support behind the decision. Why? Partly, we suspect, because continuing to withhold conflict free certification from Zimbabwean diamonds would have destroyed the viability of the 1% myth.

But we don’t really have to guess how the diamond industry will respond to our calls for it to abandon the 1% myth. Already, the WDC has responded. Last week, the WDC sent us a formal response to our blog series – even before we’d finished. The diamond industry insists that the 1% myth is true. It also criticizes Brilliant Earth on various grounds.

We seem to have struck a deep nerve.  Even we may not have appreciated the extent to which  the diamond industry depends on the 1% myth. In our next blog, we’ll share with you what the WDC has to say, and we’ll issue our response.

In our first blog in this series, we noted that the diamond industry defines “conflict diamond” in very narrow terms: as a diamond used by a rebel group to finance a civil war against a legitimate government. Using this definition, the diamond industry determines that the only diamonds that count as conflict diamonds are those from Côte d’Ivoire, and that conflict diamonds make up only 0.2% of the world’s diamond supply.

In our next blog, we discussed the diamonds the industry is failing to count – most notably, diamonds from Angola and Zimbabwe, which together could soon make up 20% of the diamond supply. These diamonds are tied to horrific killings, rape, and torture. However, the diamond industry does not count them because they are not associated with the right type of violence – that is, violence committed by rebel soldiers in a civil war context.

Should any other diamonds be counted as conflict diamonds? We believe so. But first, let’s talk a little more about how the 1% myth, in practice, misleads consumers.

Many diamond jewelry shoppers begin their shopping experience with some vague misgivings about ethical problems in diamond mining. But if they search the Internet, they’ll find the 1% myth on countless web sites, including on the web sites of many leading jewelers. If they go to a jewelry store and ask about conflict diamonds, retailers have a ready answer at their disposal: the 1% myth. Retailers will tell shoppers that less than 1% of diamonds are conflict diamonds, or that more than 99% of diamonds have been certified by the Kimberley Process as conflict free.

Most consumers will leave it at that. They’ll assume that the diamond industry now produces an ethical product. To be fair, the diamond industry does disclose its narrow definition of “conflict diamond.” Many retailers disclose this definition too. However, most consumers hearing the 1% statistic still won’t realize what has been left unsaid. They’ll interpret the statistic as more or less a general index of ethical conditions in diamond mining.

And that’s why we believe that in addition to including all diamonds tied to violence, conflict diamonds also should be defined to include extremely serious labor and environmental abuses, which are rampant in diamond mining. Admittedly, the term “conflict diamond” works better for diamonds tied directly to violence; so does the term “blood diamond,” often used as a synonym for conflict diamond. (On the other hand, serious labor and environmental abuses can make conflict more likely.) But terminology shouldn’t be a limiting factor. New terms can always be devised. The main point is this: if the diamond industry is going to heavily promote a single statistic describing ethical conditions in the diamond industry, it’s irresponsible not to include abuses that most consumers would be shocked to discover.

What are some of those abuses?

To start off, they include child labor. In some areas of Africa, children are a major part of the diamond mining workforce. For instance, a survey of diamond mining in the Lunda Norte province of Angola, one of the country’s principal mining areas, found that nearly half of miners were between the ages of 5 and 16. Many, if not most, child miners do not attend school, giving up their childhoods as well as their futures to diamond mining.

The diamond industry is rife with other forms of worker exploitation. Working conditions can be dangerous, and wages pitifully low. In Africa, for instance, a million diamond diggers earn wages of less than a dollar a day. Most of these diggers live in extreme poverty, and they often lack basic necessities such as running water and sanitation.

In addition, some diamonds are associated with devastating environmental abuses. In Sierra Leone, for example, diamond mining has scarred the landscape with thousands of abandoned mining pits. When it rains, these pits fill with water, become infested with mosquitoes, and serve as breeding grounds for malaria.

The worst labor and environmental conditions in diamond mining tend to take place in artisanal diamond mining – the type of informal, loosely regulated diamond mining in which individuals, rather than large mining companies, pan or dig for diamonds. About 10% to 15% of the world’s diamonds are produced by artisanal diamond miners. We don’t necessarily support boycotting or banning these diamonds, since miners depend on them. We favor structural reforms, such as the establishment of a fair trade diamond certification system that would identify fairly-mined diamonds and encourage the adoption of stronger labor and environmental safeguards.

But we do think that in any general statistic on ethical conditions in diamond mining, the diamond industry can’t ignore the plight of the world’s diamond diggers. Some portion of the diamonds they produce needs to be included in that statistic, as does a portion of the diamonds mined in more formal, corporate settings – which are by no means free from serious labor and environmental abuses either.

Ultimately, however, we think that completely different kinds of statistical approaches could be more accurate and representative of ethical conditions in the diamond industry. In our next blog, we’ll discuss some alternative possibilities for measuring ethical abuses in the diamond industry. We’ll also take a closer look at why the diamond industry uses the 1% statistic – and why it is unlikely to give it up.

What is the diamond industry leaving out?

Let’s start with diamonds that the diamond industry has no basis for excluding – even on its own terms. The diamond industry relies on the definition of “conflict diamond” used by the  Kimberley Process, the international diamond certification scheme it supports and helped to found. The Kimberley Process defines “conflict diamond” extremely narrowly: as a diamond used by a rebel group to finance a civil war against a legitimate government. But even under this narrow definition, the diamond industry is failing to count some diamonds.

In addition to Côte d’Ivoire, there are other countries where rebel groups are using diamonds to finance insurgent activities.  For instance, in the Central African Republic rebels are fighting with each other to control diamond mines in the country’s east. And in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), rebels are exploiting the country’s natural resources – diamonds, gold, and various minerals – to finance a war that has killed more than 5 million people.

The Central African Republic produced about $49 million worth of rough diamonds in 2010, or 0.43% of global production value, according to Kimberley Process statistics. The DRC produced $174 million in rough diamonds last year, or about 1.5% of global production. Only a fraction of the diamonds produced in these countries help to finance rebel groups. But these two examples alone show that the 0.2% estimate is very likely inaccurate.

So far we haven’t necessarily disproven the 1% myth. But the picture dramatically changes when we begin to define “conflict diamond” in a less arbitrary way.

The Kimberley Process’s definition of “conflict diamond” is nonsensically limited. Under the Kimberley Process, diamonds tied to killings, torture, beatings, and rape are not conflict diamonds – unless those diamonds help to finance rebel groups in the context of a civil war. However, some of the worst diamond-related violence today is not being committed by rebel groups, but by despotic governments.

For instance, in Angola, the military has been brutally cracking down on Congolese diamond miners who have been crossing into northeast Angola in search of better economic opportunities. Angolan soldiers harass, beat, and kill diamond miners who refuse to pay bribes. Earlier this year, a group working for the United Nations documented 21,000 cases of serious human rights violations – including torture, beatings, and rape – committed by the Angolan military against Congolese diamond miners and their families. The same monitor found evidence that the military is engaging in the systematic rape of Congolese women and girls.

Partnership Africa Canada, a non-profit group, argues that the Angolan government’s record of violence against diamond miners “taints all of Angola’s diamonds.” We agree. And when we include Angolan diamonds in our calculations, the 1% myth is completely shattered. In 2010, Angola produced $976 million in rough diamonds – or 8.5% of global diamond production.

Angola is not the only country where militaries are killing, torturing, and raping diamond miners and their families. Several years ago, a massive diamond deposit was discovered in the Marange diamond fields in eastern Zimbabwe. In 2008, Zimbabwe’s military seized the Marange diamond fields for itself, massacring more than 200 miners. Soldiers then began forcing local adults and children to mine for diamonds on the military’s behalf. Disobedient diamond miners have been tortured, beaten, and raped. (In August, the BBC reported that the military even runs torture camps for diamond miners.) In addition, President Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s authoritarian leader, is stealing diamond revenues, using the profits to fund his political party and strengthen his grip on power.

Zimbabwe exported less than $50 million in rough diamonds per year until 2010. However, due to the newly-discovered diamond deposit, diamond production in Zimbabwe is soaring. Last year, Zimbabwe officially exported $340 million in rough diamonds, or 3% of the global total. It is believed that Zimbabwe could soon produce up to $2 billion in rough diamonds yearly. This means that Zimbabwe is poised to produce 10 to 15% of the world’s diamonds — which would make it the world’s leading diamond producer.

Together, violence in Angola and Zimbabwe demonstrate that the scale of the conflict diamond problem is not what the diamond industry suggests. These countries were responsible for a combined 11.5% of global diamond exports in 2010. In future years, they easily could produce 20% of the world’s diamonds – meaning that 1 in 5 diamonds could be a conflict diamond. This is 100 times as much as the 0.2% estimate that the diamond industry promotes.

To be sure, our estimate still leaves out a whole range of ghastly labor and environmental abuses in diamond mining – including child labor, poverty-level wages, and serious environmental degradation. In our next blog, we’ll examine these other problems in greater depth.

In particular, we’d like to call attention to one highly inaccurate statistic:  a statistic that has long been promoted by the World Diamond Council (WDC), an organization representing the global diamond industry. According to www.diamondfacts.org, a site maintained by the group, the percentage of conflict diamonds in the world diamond supply is “considerably less than 1%.” The WDC attributes this low percentage to the success of the Kimberley Process, the international diamond certification scheme it helped to found. “Today 74 governments have enshrined into their national law the Kimberley Process Certification System, and now more than 99% of the world’s diamonds are from conflict free sources,” states the web site.

Based only on this statistic, it sounds as if conflict diamonds are a very small problem indeed – as if the flow of conflict diamonds has been reduced to a trickle. Is this true? Regrettably, it isn’t. The notion that conflict diamonds make up considerably less than 1% of the diamond supply is really quite misleading – so misleading, that we’ll call it the 1% myth.

To explain the 1% myth, we’ll need to address this issue in a series of blogs. Today, let’s first take a look at how the diamond industry arrives at its own statistic.

The diamond industry defines “conflict diamond” as the Kimberley Process does – in the narrowest of terms. Under the Kimberley Process, the only diamonds that count as conflict diamonds are those used by a rebel group to finance a civil war against a legitimate government. Based on this definition, the Kimberley Process has determined that just one country produces conflict diamonds: Côte d’Ivoire, a small country in West Africa with an ongoing civil conflict.

If you take at face value that the only conflict diamonds that exist are diamonds from Côte d’Ivoire, then the calculation would go something like this. Every year, rebels in Côte d’Ivoire smuggle about $20 million in diamonds into neighboring countries. In 2010, the global diamond industry produced about $11.4 billion in diamonds. Divide $20 million by $11.4 billion and you get a very small percentage – about 0.2%. This is what the diamond industry means when it states that “considerably less than 1%” of diamonds are conflict diamonds. (Indeed, the WDC cites a statistic finding that 99.8% of diamonds are conflict free.)

But is it truly the case that only 0.2% of diamonds are conflict diamonds? It can’t be. That’s because excluded from this calculation are billions of dollars worth of diamonds tied to extreme violence – including torture, rape, and killings. In our next blog, we’ll take a closer look at what the diamond industry leaves out, and how bad the problem of conflict diamonds really is.

But is this controversy really over? We don’t think so. Not with human rights organizations threatening to leave the Kimberley Process, and not with billions of dollars in tainted diamonds about to be released into the international diamond supply.

As we’ve noted on this blog before, human rights violations in the Marange diamond fields are extremely serious. In 2008, the Zimbabwean army seized the Marange diamond fields, killing more than 200 people in three bloody weeks. The army then enslaved local adults and children, forcing them to mine for diamonds on the army’s behalf. Miners who disobey have suffered all kinds of brutalities, including torture, rape, and beatings.

The Kimberley Process placed a ban on the export of Marange diamonds in late 2009. At the time, it asked Zimbabwe to take a number of measures to comply with Kimberley Process standards. The Zimbabwean military was supposed to withdraw from the Marange diamond fields. Action was supposed to taken to curb smuggling. And human rights abuses—including killings, torture, and rape—were supposed to stop.

Two years later, very little progress has been made on any of these fronts. The Zimbabwean military is still deployed in the area. Military generals and political allies of Zimbabwe’s authoritarian leader, President Robert Mugabe, still control mining operations. Smuggling is still rampant. Worst of all, human rights abuses are ongoing. A BBC investigation in September revealed that the Zimbabwean military is still running camps where local diamond miners are torture and raped.

Despite Zimbabwe’s lack of progress, Kimberley Process member countries have been engaging in a long and divisive debate about whether to lift the ban—with the United States and Europe arguing in favor of the ban, and many diamond-producing countries siding with Zimbabwe. Last week, at a meeting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United States and Europe finally relented. Zimbabwe is will now be permitted to sell Marange diamonds. (As a small consolation, the United States will hold the rotating chair of the Kimberley Process in 2012.)

The diamond industry seems to consider the agreement a positive step forward. “This is a real milestone, and demonstrates categorically that the Kimberley Process provides the framework through which the integrity of the rough diamond chain of distribution can be protected,” said Eli Izhakoff, president of the World Diamond Council, the diamond industry trade group.

We disagree. With the export ban lifted, the Kimberley Process has lost its leverage to persuade Zimbabwe to improve its mining practices. Furthermore, the decision doesn’t solve any problems for the Kimberley Process. Instead, it compromises the Kimberly Process’s integrity and sets the certification scheme up for further controversy.

Human rights abuses and massive corruption still taint Marange diamonds. With each new revelation of wrongdoing in Zimbabwe’s diamond industry, the Kimberley Process’s reputation is going to be further stained. Human rights organizations boycotted last week’s Kimberley Process meeting. From now on, their criticism of the Kimberley Process will be especially sharp, and their involvement in the Kimberley Process is no longer guaranteed.

The Kimberley Process also risks alienating consumers. Does the Kimberley Process think consumers will not notice or care when diamonds mined using forced labor and linked to torture, rape, killings, and corruption begin to flood the shelves of jewelry stores worldwide?

The number of Marange diamonds about to enter the diamond supply is too large to escape consumer attention. In the past few years, Zimbabwe has stockpiled an estimated $1.7 billion worth of Marange diamonds. (By comparison, the entire world produces about $12 billion in rough diamonds per year.) This doesn’t even count the estimated $2 billion per year worth of rough diamonds that the Marange diamond fields potentially could produce going forward.

Essentially, the Kimberley Process has decided to certify conflict diamonds as “conflict free”—and hope for the best. We think this strategy is unethical and likely to backfire. The only sustainable path forward for the Kimberley Process is the honest one: to refuse to certify diamonds mined in violent conditions.

Famous for having a distinctive “pigeon blood” hue, Burmese rubies truly are coated in blood. Ruby mines in Burma, which is also known as Myanmar, are nightmarish places where adults and children work in slave-like conditions. The Burmese military controls the mines and literally forces people to mine for rubies. Profits flow directly into the pockets of Burma’s generals and the country’s elite, helping to prop up one of the most oppressive regimes on earth. The Burmese military dictatorship is guilty of crimes including rape, torture, and even the ethnic cleansing of minorities. The video below provides a glimpse into ruby mining in Burma.

So what gives us reason for hope? Elections held last year have brought a new president, U Thein Sein, to power. Observers considered the elections fraudulent and widely assumed that Thein Sein would do the bidding of Burma’s generals. But he has instead made a series of stunning moves: freeing political prisoners, allowing more press freedoms, opening a dialogue with political dissidents, and taking measures to protect the environment and reduce poverty. About 90 percent of the Burmese people live at or below the poverty line.

It is too early to say whether Burma is on a path to democracy—or whether, as a result of democratic reforms, human rights conditions in Burma’s ruby industry will improve any time soon. Certainly, the Burmese military will not be eager to give up control of the ruby mines. Despite U.S. and European sanctions on Burma, the ruby trade remains lucrative for the military. In July, a ruby and jade auction held by the Burmese government netted $1.5 billion.

Still, we’re encouraged. It is now somewhat easier to imagine an end to slave labor in Burma’s ruby mines and an improvement in human rights conditions throughout the country. Someday, we hope, there will even be an ethical supply of Burmese rubies helping to build a prosperous, democratic Burma.

For most of its history, Madre de Dios has been lucky to escape the development pressures destroying other areas of the Amazon. But suddenly, this relatively pristine rainforest faces a new threat: gold mining. As gold prices have soared in recent years, gold miners have been flocking to Madre de Dios in ever greater numbers. There are now at least 40,000 gold miners working in the Madre de Dios rainforest. Most of them mine informally, without legal permission and without following basic labor or environmental standards.

All of this new gold mining has led to devastating social and environmental consequences. Deforestation rates in the Madre de Dios region have risen six-fold. Toxic mercury, used by gold miners to isolate gold, is being spewed into the air and water – and being breathed in by the gold miners themselves. Particularly disturbing are the reports of human trafficking in gold mining boomtowns. This month, police raided 60 houses of prostitution in Madre de Dios, freeing 293 women and girls from sexual slavery. The youngest girl was 13 years old.

To some extent, the Peruvian government is dealing with forces that are hard to counteract. Rising gold prices make gold mining an alluring possibility for the 30 percent of Peruvians who live in poverty. Policing a rainforest is extremely difficult. Indeed, it seems that other countries in the Amazon basin – Brazil, Guyana, Bolivia, Columbia, and Venezuela – are experiencing their own Amazon gold rushes. They, too, are finding it difficult to stop gold mining in the rainforest and all  the accompanying social and environmental problems.

Nevertheless, at Brilliant Earth we believe that positive change really can happen in the gold mining industry, and that market pressure can be a fundamental part of that change. Most gold today is used to produce jewelry. If more jewelry consumers demand jewelry made from recycled gold, there will be less need for gold mining altogether. And if the norm in the jewelry trade becomes gold  obtained  from traceable, socially and environmentally sources, gold miners in Peru will have an incentive to improve their mining practices, or to mine in less ecologically sensitive areas.

A different gold mining model is already being tried in Latin America. Through a new fair trade gold certification system, gold miners are being encouraged to use eco-friendly mining methods. So far, gold produced in Colombia, Bolivia, and even in central Peru has received fair trade certification. (Brilliant Earth uses only recycled gold, although we have begun to purchase some fair trade gold from Colombia.) We believe that with time, gold mining practices throughout Peru can improve — and that perhaps, the Madre de Dios rainforest can still be saved.