“Digging Down Into the Kimberley Process” is a WDC newsletter series that provides insight into the international forum and the certification scheme it oversees, to educate both the members of the diamond industry and the consuming public about international efforts undertaken from 2000 to eliminate the trade in conflict diamonds.
The latest article in the series is authored by Udi Sheintal, WDC’s Secretary, who is among only a handful of individuals still active in the KP, who were present during its initial days, while the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme was being planned and then introduced worldwide.
AN ORIGINAL KIMBERLITE
Udi Sheintal, WDC’s Secretary, Legal Advisor and General Counsel, who is one of a select group of “Original Kimberlites,” who have been associated with the Kimberley Process almost since its founding in 2000.
DECEMBER 17, 2024
Udi Sheintal, Secretary of the World Diamond Council, has been associated with the Kimberley Process even before it was named as such. A regular participant in various KP forums for an unbroken 24 years, he has the broad point of view not only of a veteran, but also as one who has represented a government Participant, the State of Israel, and, later, a KP Observer, the WDC. In his opinion, this dual perspective has influenced the way he has thought and acted over the years. It also has earned him the title of “Original Kimberlite,” which is the name given to a now small group of individuals who have been contributing to the KP from the beginning.
As a young university graduate, he joined Israel’s Ministry of Industry and Trade in 1981, training as a commercial attache. He served first in Canada, as Israel’s Trade Commissioner, for period of four years. His second posting abroad was to the United States, where he was appointed the Israeli Trade Commissioner for the southeastern part of the country, based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Upon returning home, in 1998 he was appointed Director of the government’s Diamonds, Precious Stones and Jewelry Administration, and also as Diamond Controller, the chief regulatory officer of the Israeli diamond sector. In this capacity, he oversaw the monitoring all diamonds imported to and exported from the country, as well as the issuance of licenses to diamond dealers. It was during this period that he became deeply involved in the creation and development of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which went into effect on January 1, 2003. He is credited with issuing the first-ever KP certificate worldwide, on a parcel of rough diamonds exported from Israel on the first day of that year.
In 2004, he was named Vice Director-General of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, serving in the position until 2007, when he left government for the private sector. That same year he was appointed Managing Director of the Israel Diamond Manufacturers Association, where he remained for five years. It was then that he began his term as WDC Secretary.
He moved to the Israel Diamond Institute (IDI) in 2012, serving as Acting General Manager through 2013, and is still retained by the body as a senior advisor.
A qualified lawyer, he has long doubled as WDC’s Legal Advisor and General Counsel, replacing Cecilia Gardner, who was the first person to hold the position. He has applied this expertise in the KP as well. He was a key member of the monitoring committee that oversaw KP-compliant rough diamond exports from the Central African Republic, before that country was readmitted as a full KP Participant at the most recent KP Plenary in Dubai in November 2024.
He says he has had the privilege of working with and consulting to all the WDC presidents since the organization’s founding.
Mr. Sheintal provides his unique perspective on the early days of Kimberley Process in his own words.
I was not present at the original first two meetings in 2000, including the one in Kimberley, South Africa, during which the concept of an international response to stem the sale of rough diamonds financing civil wars in countries like Sierra Leone, the DRC and Angola was first discussed on an informal basis. But I joined the working group very soon afterwards, as a representative of the State of Israel, home to one of the world’s most important diamond trading centers.
Those discussions, which eventually led to the formal agreement by 37 countries, plus the European Union, at a meeting of ministers in November 2002 in Interlaken, Switzerland, about the creation of a certification scheme, took about two and a half years. I was there during all its stages, as more and more nations signed on.
The Interlaken Declaration, signed on November 5, 2002, at a ministerial meeting in the Swiss resort town of Interlaken, signaling the agreement of the 37 countries and the European Union to launch the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme on January 1, 2023. (Photo: Ollie Craig on Pexels.com)
The clear differentiation of roles between government and industry and civil society was less evident during the initial period of negotiations. In the beginning, for example, Belgium was represented by the senior managers of Diamond High Council (HRD), which was the body that preceded the AWDC. They were Peter Meeus, who was General Manager at the time, and Marc Van Bockstael, who later served for many years as Chair of the KP’s Working Group of Diamond Experts, on behalf of the WDC.
Things changed after the publication by the United Nations of the Fowler Report, named after its author, Robert Fowler, who then served as Canada’s UN ambassador. It alleged that certain industry players, some African and European governments, and the political wing of UNITA, which was leading the rebel armies in Angola, had violated the Lusaka Protocol as well as UN-imposed sanctions. The Lusaka Protocol, which dated back to 1994, was an unsuccessful attempt to end the Angolan Civil War by integrating and disarming UNITA and starting national reconciliation.
At that point, the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided that the matter was too important to entrust exclusively to private sector players, although Peter and Mark remained involved thoughout. Ultimately, it largely was Mark who authored the working paper that outlined the essential elements of an international certification scheme for rough diamonds, on which the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme was based.
Comprehending the magnitutude of the new KP
But Belgium was not the only country in which it took time to fully comprehend the magnitudee of what was developing. The United States was originally represented in the discussions by USAID, which is the government agency that leads the country’s international development and humanitarian assistance programs. In time, the role was taken over by the State Department, which had the legal authority to oversee sanctions regimes, where it remains today.
Other countries came to the table with both government and industry present. Israel was one, where I represented government, and the industry was represented by Zvi Shur, who at the time served as General Manager of the Israel Diamond Manufacturers Association.
Another was India, whose government came together with its industry. They were especially concerned about the developing certification system, because even before Interlaken it had been agreed that that small diamonds would be covered. The Indians contended that the smaller goods that their industry processed were of little value to the rebel forces selling conflict diamonds, because the rebels would need very large quantities to make trading in them economically meaningful. I understood the point they were making.
But the decision to make the KPCS inclusive was widely accepted, so not only small goods but even most diamond powders came to be included in the system.
Udi Sheintal (standing, third from left), then Israel’s Diamond Controller, watching as the first-ever Kimberley Process certificate is issued. The date was January 1, 2003, the official launch date of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which was a regular work day in Israel. Also looking on (standing, from left) were Moti Besser, then-Managing Director of the Israel Diamond Manufacturers Association; Shmuel Schnitzer, then-President of the Israel Diamond Exchange; Eli Izhakoff, then-President of the World Diamond Council; Yair Cohen, then-President of the Israel Diamond Exchange; and Uri Schwartz, then-President of the Israel Diamond Manufacturers Association.
The certification scheme at that stage was definitely a work in progress. During a late-night working meeting in Moscow in 2001, I introduced a motion that proposed that while the producing countries should issue KP certificates on all legitimately mined rough diamonds, we in trading centres, from the first point of entry, would not be obliged to do so. We had already accepted the principle that traders of rough in a KP member country could only sell or buy diamonds from traders in other KP member countries. In developing my proposal, I had borrowed a concept from the Jewish dietary laws, where the assumption is that, if all the basic ingredients in a food item are verified as being kosher, so should be the final product – as long as milk and meat are not mixed.
My logic was sound, but the proposal was not greeted with warm applause. On the contrary, to this day I remember the uproar and protests from some African producers, who insisted that, if only producing countries will issue certificates, it would label conflict diamonds as being an exclusively African problem and not a general industry problem.
An immediate break in the proceedings was announced, and consultations between the industry and the governments of the trading and polishing centers stretched into the early hours of the morning. We ultimately caved in with grace, and agreed to do as one African country representative rightly put it: “If WE issue certificates, YOU will issue certificates.” The rest is history.
A critical push for progress
During the early years, the civil society group in the developing KP forum was led largely by Global Witness, whose founder Charmian Gooch and campaigner Alex Yearsley managed an uncompromising campaign against the use of rough diamonds by rebel gangs in Sierra Leone, the DRC and Angola.
They received a sympathetic ear from Peter Hain, the Minister of State at Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who broadly was reponsible for relations with African countries. He had a strong emotional connection to the region, having grown up in South Africa during the 1950s and 1960s, and then becoming a leader of the anti-apartheid movement in the United Kingdom.
It was Hain who gave impetus to the Kimberley Process, sending formal invitations for a meeting and consultations in London, through the foreign ministries of the various countries that deal with diamonds, along the entire value chain. It was a request from Her Majesty’s government that many could not refuse, and from there, at the third meeting after the first in Kimberley, things began to progress more quickly.
Milestones were set, and further meetings arranged five weeks apart, each time in another country.
Peter Hain, Minister of State at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who in 2000 pushed for country representatives to meet in London to keep the fledgling process moving forward. (Photo: Roger Harris on Wikimedia Commons)
Writing the Core Document
But about a year into the negotiations process, progress appeared to have stalled. This time a push was given by the representative of the European Union.
He was Ton De Vries, a Dutch official who he kept us on a short leash. He prepared a provocative protocol, outlining what he proposed as the KP’s Core Document. Its chapters were essentially based on certification schemes operating in other fields.
But nobody wanted to agree to the text he proposed, so he gave every one of the chapters to officials from a different country, asking them to go over it and approve the chapter as is, or rewrite it as they think it should be. This would be discussed at future meetings.
Israel received the chapter on Internal Controls. I did not agree with his proposed text, so I submitted together with Zvi Shur a new chapter with procedures on how the internal supervision should be carried out in each country. I wrote it from my experience as Israel’s Diamond Controller.
In the end, some of the procedures I proposed were accepted as minimum requirements in Section II. The majority of the other procedures I suggested were not deleted, but adopted in Annex II of the basic document, as Best Practices.
The inclusion of Annex II was a good idea. When the certification system was eventually launched in 2003, many members wanted to “show off” how much of the best practices they had adopted in their own national systems. One can surmize that this would serve them well during peer review visits, when they could claim that they were not just sticking to the minimum requirements, but actually doing much better.
Relinquishing control over state-held data
It must be remembered that the KP does not have legal authority to enforce its protocols or decisions. In this respect, it is similar to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which had been established only about five years earlier, in 1995. Both organizations created a baseline set of rules, which each and every member state agreed to abide by.
In the case of the KP, the baseline was the minimum requirements. What this meant, and the same is true of the WTO rules, is that when countries became KP members, they effectively agree to incorporate the minimum requirements in their own national statutes, or in regional regulations, as the case in the EU. This usually required laws to be passed by parliaments or decrees to be issued.
It was not always a simple process, especially when information that previously was considered the sole property of one state now became available to other states as well, by virtue of them being members of the KP.
The Core Document, which was negotiated ahead of the Interlaken agreement, set as a minimum requirement the reporting by member countries of rough diamond import and export statistics in detail, and also the provision of information about all KP certificates they issued, including identification numbers. If they did not comply, they could find themselves suspended or even removed from the process, which effectively is the only real sanction the KP can apply.
The data is uploaded every quarter to the KP’s statistical database. It was established and managed by the Canadians in the first years of the Kimberley Process, and later responsibility was transferred to the United States. Access is permitted through a unique password, used by the KP Focal Points, who provide trade statistics and data about KP certificates issued. Aggregation of the data that is provided is published once a year by the Working Group on Statistics.
The requirement to supply statistics sounds straight-forward and common sense, but this was not always the case. As countries began to report their data, the government of Russia let us know that it had a legal problem.
Udi Sheintal, then Vice Director-General of Israel’s Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, addressing the 6th Annual Meeting of the World Diamond Council in Antwerp, Belgium, in July 2008.
Dating back to Soviet times, when diamonds were considered a strategic mineral, all such statistics were declared to be “state secrets,” prohibiting their disclosure. The practice was continued in new Russian Federation, following a presidential decree issued in 1995.
The matter was not resolved by the time of the launch of the KPCS on January 1, 2003. However, it came to a head in the third year of the certification scheme, when the Russians were considering becoming KP Chair. They then encountered opposition, since they had not met an important criterion of the Kimberley Process.
Ultimately, Russia’s strong desire to lead the KP led to an historic decision to change the law. On March 3, 2005, President Vladimir Putin signed another decree to amend the list of state secrets, removing both information about the country’s reserves of diamonds and platinum group minerals.
Russia thus became compliant with KP minimum requirements, and the way was open for it to bid for leadership of the Kimberley Process.
Udi Sheintal representing the World Diamond Council at the Kimberley Process Plenary meeting in New Delhi, India, in November 2019.
The art of the possible
Many people underestimate what was achieved in the creation the Kimberley Process, and also how it has withstood the test of time, however imperfect and incomplete it may be. The fact that we were able to bring together so large a group of countries, industry members and civil society groups, many of which have divergent and competing interests, and then established a system that requires collaboration and a sense of common purpose in order to operate, has few if any precedents in human history.
There was a sense from the early days that we were building a family. And, like our each of personal families, which sometimes may be disfunctional, the ties that bind us together needed to be stonger than the forces that could tear us apart. There had to a sense of mutual responsibility.
The minimum requirements that are demanded from each KP member country are subject to peer review, and they had to approved by the full consensus of all voting members (again, much like the WTO), in which each KP Participant state – large or small – has but one vote, whereas Observers have no vote all.
When we decided on the consensus principle we knew it was not a perfect mechanism, and that it would likely to lead to a sometimes frustratingly slow decision-making process. But it served the greater good, because it gave every Participant member an equitable voice in the Kimberley Process.
We knew that over the course of time international and regional events would inevitably challenge us, and that we as an organization would need to find ways to ensure that the KP itself was not threatened. Israel, which has long experience of being expelled from or prevented from joining international bodies, insisted on an insertion in the KP’s Core Document of a clause stating that any member that wants to host a KP meeting “must” make all necessary arrangements to facilitate the participation of all other members, without exception. But our delegation also supported without reservation the acceptance of Lebanon as a KP member, despite the absence of diplomatic relations between our two countries.
Otto von Bismarck said that politics is “the art of the possible,” and looking at the Kimberley Process I tend to agree. It’s certainly provided me with an always fascinating view of how our world works, for a period that is now approaching a quarter of century.