18
Committee and named after its chair, Canada’s ambassador to the UN, Robert Fowler.
40
The
cumulative effect of these three reports along with some other steps and actions taken by other
NGOs and governments committed to humanitarian issues put the conflict diamond problem on
the international agenda, and during the year 2000 the issue got media attention and was referred
to in several major newspapers and newsmagazines,
41
which, combined with the diplomatic and
advocacy efforts of that year, gave considerable momentum to the Kimberley Process, which had
been launched in February of the same year (2000). This pivotal role of non-state actors is
emphasized not only by the activists and their publications, but also by researchers not affiliated
with the campaign, who in their analysis of the conflict diamond issue recognize the central role
that global civil society actors assumed in the Kimberley Process and attribute much of the
momentum that the negotiations gained to the efforts of these actors.
42
The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme: A Transformative Initiative?
The campaign launched by civil society actors was very much grounded in transformative ideas
about what constitutes security. The conflict diamonds issue was defined from the outset as a
humanitarian issue. The emphasis has not been on the economic costs of trade in blood diamonds
or on the regional instability that the illicit trade in diamonds creates. The emphasis has been
placed on the suffering that diamond-funded armed conflicts cause for civilians in terms of loss
of life, mutilation, displacement, …etc. In that sense, the civil society campaign surrounding this
issue was designed to go beyond national security and to promote human security. This way of
framing and interpreting the conflicts in countries like Angola or Sierra Leone was reinforced by
the media coverage of the British intervention in Sierra Leone, which gave considerable attention
40
Ibid., p. 3.
41
Ibid., p. 4.
42
Pamela Mbabazi/Sandra Maclean/Timothy Shaw, 2002.
Convention