The Kimberley Process (KP) chair called for the establishment of a permanent secretariat to oversee the rehabilitation of nations that have been banned from exporting diamonds.
The proposal will be part of the agenda at the KP plenary in Dubai from November 13 to 17, the chair’s office said.
“We need to jointly address the issue that the KP today lacks a permanent structure able to handle the numerous issues faced by countries that have been prohibited to export, and guiding them back to normalization,” said Ahmed Bin Sulayem, the United Arab Emirates-based chair for 2016. The industry needs a “well-structured permanent body” to take over the work which is currently carried out by volunteers, he added.
The secretariat, which would be under the mandate of the United Nations, should be funded by diamond-consuming nations, not producing nations, the KP said. Furthermore, Bin Sulayem added it should be manned by an African national with in-depth knowledge of the KP, its regulations, the working bodies of the KP Certification Scheme and the continent’s natural resources sector.
