World Diamond Council President Feriel Zerouki has emphasized the heightened importance of responsibility, sustainability and provenance in the jewelry industry, specifically because its products are used to celebrate important life moments.
While it may not have been immediately apparent during the tumultuous days in 2000, the structure of the WDC enabled the new organization to take a broader perspective than that required by its role within the KP, ensuring its relevance long after the civil wars that prompted the conflict diamond crisis eventually drew to a close.
The 2023 Intersessional Meeting of the Kimberley Process concluded yesterday in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Addressing the closing session of the gathering, World Diamond Council President Feriel Zerouki was positive about headway having been made during the four-day event.
In her first speech to the Kimberley Process as President of the World Diamond Council, Feriel Zerouki has stressed that the diversity of opinion and background of the KP’s members – Participants and Observers alike – should be considered not a deficiency but rather a source of strength.
She take office following three years as WDC Vice President and almost two decades as a leading advocate for enhancing standards and driving progress within the diamond industry.
For those of us who have spent the past 20 years trying to alleviate the effects of bloody conflicts, as well as prevent them from happening, the outbreak of war in Europe, ghastly revealed to us in real time, brought home what others suffered for so many years in Africa, frequently beyond the view of cameras.
I am indeed an African. And, as a product of South Africa’s liberation struggle, I would not waste the access I had to opportunities that were never open to my parents, their parents or their parents’ parents.
February 21, 2023, marked 16 months since the official launch of the World Diamond Council’s revised System of Warranties (SoW), in 2021 on the 40th anniversary of the establishment by the United Nations of the International Day of Peace.
A milestone, years in the making, was registered on November 5, 2022, during the Kimberley Process Plenary meeting in Gaborone, Botswana, when the body greenlighted a recommendation made by a Technical Expert Team (TET) chaired by the World Diamond Council, proposing that Botswana become the site of the prospective KP Permanent Secretariat. It is projected to begin operations in January 2024.
The tenth article in the series is authored by Colleen Rooney, Chief Communications and ESG Officer of Signet Jewelers, the world’s largest specialty retailer of diamond jewelry.
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