Maxi Jazz: The true cost of bling

On the eve of the Mobo awards, Faithless's rapper says it's time for the hip-hop community to ditch the diamonds

The mortal price we pay for oil is well known - even though we hesitate to think of it while filling up at a petrol station. Yet how likely are we to think of rape, murder and child slavery when we admire a diamond? Diamonds are luxury items aimed principally at women, but successful men love to wear them, too. They are the bedrock of "bling", and sure to be on show at next week's Mobo awards - but do the stars wearing them realise that their ostentatious diamonds are the fruits of a slave trade that is the ruin of countries such as Sierra Leone?

Horrific civil wars in Angola, the Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone have been fuelled and funded by "conflict diamonds". Armed militias control mines and even entire diamond-producing regions in order to trade the rough gems directly for guns. In the 1970s there was a similar trade in Jamaica - "guns for ganja", with American gangsters. The difference is that the Jamaican gunmen didn't inflict systematic and wholesale rape and massacre upon a locality until everyone left.

So why aren't conflict diamonds illegal? The Kimberley Process is an inter-government, international diamond industry and civil society initiative to stem the flow of conflict or "blood" diamonds. It was set up in the 1990s and is composed of 43 participants in a voluntary system that is meant to impose extensive requirements on participants to certify that shipments are free from conflict diamonds. But it has been flawed from the start. The process is meant to involve the extensive documenting and tracking of all rough diamonds entering a participating country but it cannot establish itself as effective without proper governmental control.Amnesty International says that it is inadequate and open to abuse.

The participating governments in the Kimberley Process should not, as they do, leave monitoring as a matter of the conscience of their citizens or the companies that make fortunes from the diamond trade. Laws have been put in place but there's no way to independently guarantee that various governments are keeping conflict diamonds out of circulation.

So, while unimaginable misery is being endured by millions of Africans, and three million people have been murdered in the Congo over the last five years, we in the West who needlessly fuel this carnage care only about the "bling" aspect. While we continue to display and glorify our childish lack of self-esteem by adorning our bodies with things that others can't afford then children, mothers and fathers continue to be slaughtered.

When I embraced hip-hop culture in the Eighties, "conscious" rappers were concerned with many ghetto-youths' obsession with huge gold "rope" chains. Now these youths have moved on to Rolexes and necklaces so studded with rocks that it's no wonder rappers have to work out. There are exceptions. Kanye West may be categorised as being part of bling culture, but he is not your average "hustla". His campaign to abolish the illicit diamond trade is refreshing, especially given the fact that the majority of his peers are laden with rocks.

Our leaders and the media moguls have led us away from the idea that before one can usefully help the weak, one must first tackle the fundamental greed that works as a force to keep them weak; that in order to tackle the root of a problem or a social issue, you first have to understand the negative source before you can go on to produce a positive antidote.

I read a quote from the US General Accounting Office from November 2003, that al-Qa'ida used diamonds to "earn money, move money and store money". And despite this the world still allows the uber-rich of the diamond industry to police themselves. You'd be forgiven for thinking that, with evidence of this nature, nations would be keen to regulate the flow of such deadly assets... forgiven until you realised that half of all conflict diamonds are sold in the USA. The diamond industry generates 6.8bn new dollars every year, bling rules, greed is good and, as the increasingly down-trodden of that country are often heard to remark, "ain't a damn thing changed".

But a difference could be made in the UK. London is the capital of the world's diamond industry, with 60 per cent of the world's rough stones passing through it. The Government needs to show some leadership and establish mandatory independent monitoring, rather than leaving it to the whim of those who profit from diamonds. If it actively encouraged the other Kimberley Process partners to do the same it would have a serious impact on this evil trade and help bring security to the ravaged regions.

The Kimberley process is ultimately a strong idea built on weak foundation, but, if participating countries are willing to readdress its methods, it can work.

I take my hat off to Johann Hari, who wrote last year, "The central myth of Blair's premiership has been the belief that you can improve the lot of the poorest without challenging the powerful." Given that many who participate in the Kimberley Process ignore the harrowing plight of millions of Africans, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that African-Americans on MTV, whose entire video budgets probably cost less than their wristwatches, also appear to be ignorant of just how many child-soldiers are bullying child-workers in blood-soaked diamond mines in Sierra Leone. It is a mark of the pervasiveness of a modern-day slave-trade and our ineffective attempts to stop it.

For more information on conflict diamonds see http://web.amnesty.org/pages/ec-diamonds-eng