To keep Russian diamonds off the market, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo has urged the jewellery sector to "take the final step" to ensure the success of the diamond initiative he submitted to the G7 on Tuesday evening.
Even though Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been ongoing for over 1.5 years now, there are no targeted sanctions to block the Russian diamond trade, while the revenue from their sale is helping to fund the war.
With Antwerp being the world's centre for trading rough and polished diamonds, Belgium and the EU have been reluctant to impose any kind of sanctions related to them. Now, however, De Croo is advocating a tracking mechanism to prevent Russian diamonds from finding their way into the markets of the G7 countries (the United States, Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan and the EU).
"Russian diamonds have become a symbol of war and human rights violations," he stressed during his address to the heads of the jewellery industry at the Belgian Consul General in New York. "The G7 wants to reduce Russian diamonds revenues. As the leading diamond trading hub, Belgium has a responsibility to contribute to its success."
As the tracking system is almost ready, De Croo also called on jewellery industry stakeholders to complete the initiative. "Making the system fully transparent requires a lot of work, which we must do together. Let us take this final step to implement the system on 1 January 2024."
It will serve as an alternative to a proposed European import ban on diamonds, which was excluded at the last minute from a round of European sanctions against Russia earlier this year.
In the past, Belgium has been, at best, ambiguous about its stance on imposing sanctions on Russian diamonds.
A worker polishes a raw diamond in the ALROSA diamond factory in Moscow. Credit: Belga / James Arthur Gekiere
In April 2022, a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy explicitly denounced Antwerp's diamond trade in his address to the Federal Parliament, De Croo even said that the impact of such a ban on Russia "would be zero, but the impact on Europe would be very great" – leading to accusations of him siding with the Antwerp diamond trade rather than seeing the market shift to Dubai.
Now, this new traceability protocol would be based on several verification mechanisms, including the Kimberley Certificate: the international certification system set up in 2003 to curb the flow of conflict diamonds – also called "blood diamonds" – into the global market. All of these would be locked using blockchain technology.
If successful, the system should eliminate Russian diamonds and reduce their value on the market in favour of diamonds from the African continent.
