Issues related specifically to the Kimberley Process
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.
The 2022 Kimberley Process Meeting ended successfully in the early hours of November 5, after a compromise proposal offered by the World Diamond Council managed to break an impasse that could have prevented the gathering dispersing without issuing a Final Communiqué.
With the KP about to mark the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) in January 2003, it is important that the international forum not rest on the laurels of its early successes, the WDC President told the Opening Session of the 2022 KP Plenary in Gaborone, Botswana, on November 1, 2022.
The 2022 KP Plenary was expected to approve a new Ad Hoc Committee to oversee the next Review and Reform Cycle, which is undertaken every five years. The conflict diamonds definition, which has remained unchanged since 2003 and applies only to rough diamonds financing civil war, will be at key item on its agenda, Edward Asscher said.
If the Kimberley Process (KP) does not adopt the reforms necessary to ensure that its rough certification scheme remains relevant in a changed world, natural diamonds could lose relevance with the new generations of socially conscious diamond consumers, said WDC President Edward Asscher, in his address yesterday to the Opening Session of the KP Plenary in Gaborone, Botswana.
We may well be approaching a tipping point. If there ever was a time to take control over your destiny, rather than being carried along by the tide, it is now. With a global economic recession looming and geopolitical instability, I urge colleagues among our industry’s younger generation to help us preserve the integrity of natural diamonds, as an ethical product that is the economic driver for economies and societies across the globe.
Edward Asscher, President of the World Diamond Council, addressed the Presidents’ Meeting of the World Federation of the Diamond Bourses (WDDB) and the International Diamond Manufacturers Association (IDMA) at the Dubai Multi-Commodities Center (DMCC) in Dubai on February 24, 2022.
Speaking on June 24, 2022, during the closing session of the 2022 Kimberley Process Intersessional in the town of Kasane, Botswana, WDC President Edward Asscher noted a positive shift in the readiness of members to reforming the KP.
The special session considered the topics of natural resources, peaceful societies and sustainable development, with a focus on lessons from the Kimberley Process
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