World Diamond Council (WDC) President Stephane Fischler will address a special meeting on the role of diamonds in fuelling conflict which is being conducted today in New York as part the United Nations General Assembly's 73rd Session, where he will call upon participants in the Kimberley Process to grasp the opportunity presented by the ongoing three-year KP Review to correct shortfalls in the system designed to prevent conflict diamonds from entering the chain of distribution.

Fischler will speak during the session entitled "From blood diamonds to peace diamonds: conflict prevention through the Kimberley Process," and will emphasise that 2019 is the final year of the Review process.

The meeting is being attended by both the current KP Chair Alok Chaturvedi of India, and the immediate past KP Chair, Hilde Hardeman of the European Commission, as well as by representatives of government, industry, civil society and academia.

Fischler will speak on behalf of the diamond and jewellery industries and will explain how the UN-mandated Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which was launched in 2003, has proven itself successful in stemming the flow of diamonds that were financing rebel forces in civil wars. However, he will point out, it has not been successful in addressing other types of mineral-related conflict, and in particular systemic violence in the mining areas. Since much of the latter has occurred in places where small-scale and artisanal mining is conducted, the KP has not met its potential as a facilitator of capacity building and sustainable economic development, he will say.

These current limitations can be corrected by adopting a number of urgently-required reforms at the conclusion of the current review process, the WDC President will stress. These include improving the KP standards and modalities, such as the peer review mechanism; raising the level of representation and participation in the body, both by governments and the United Nations; improving the gathering and flow of essential data; and creating a permanent secretariat, which will be staffed by full-time professionals.

Critically, Fischler will urge the Kimberley Process to galvanize its absolute commitment to its conflict-prevention mission, and this will require, he will stress,  the expansion of the definition of "conflict diamonds" to cover all forms of systemic violence, including those carried out by state and private security forces. A proposal to this effect was put forward by the Government of Canada at last November's KP Plenary Meeting in Brussels, and was supported by both the industry and civil society participants in the tripartite forum. The WDC President will call on the KP to achieve consensus on the issue before the end of the year.

Fischler will also describe how the World Diamond Council is already conducting reforms of its own, to enable at the industry-level the type of progress it is advocating for the KP. These include a revised System of Warranties, tracking both rough and polished diamonds all the way to the jewellery retailer, which now expressly reference human rights and strict labor practices, and also support the OECD Due Diligence Guidelines for Minerals from High-Risk Areas.