40

RAW MATERIALS

Diamonds are a Congolese militias best friend How an old-fashioned marriage proposal turned into
a contemporary business proposition for a North American woman against the African diamond conict
By: Janelle Jordan

Like most couples, bride-to-be Beth Gerstein and her fiance dreamed of finding that symbolic diamond engagement ring which brilliantly sparkled their love and commitment. They soon discovered, however, the symbolic purity of a diamond instead glimmered an unseen, trail of blood that stretched over 8,800 miles from their San Francisco city home, originating in the Congo. The start of Beths big wedding engagement was one small step closer to the beginning of the end to human endangerment by the creation of Brilliant Earth. Beth Gersteins wedding engagement seven years ago was teetering at the crossroads between love and hate. Specifically, it was the search of Beths diamond engagement ring that straddled human ethical and societal battle lines. Balancing between a future of loyalty with her fiance Alex and an escalating African civil war in the Congo, Beths values tipped the balance in helping eradicate African diamonds bloodshed past. While wearing a diamond ring on her left hand may have, by Western standards, signified her eternal commitment to Alex, for Beth, it symbolized her pulling the trigger with her right.

STOPPING CONFLICT DIAMONDS As a student of Stanford Universitys Graduate School of Business, Beth, alongside her colleague Eric Grossberg, learned about the atrocities of which the Congo diamond miners suffered against militia groups. Congolese men, women and, even child miners, are enslaved in knee deep waters to dig for diamonds by armed forces. These soldiers then extort the diamonds in order to pay the ongoing civil war, at the expense of shedding the blood of the miners: in essence, blood diamonds. This bloody, economically induced butchery was the focus of Erics own independent research. Coupled with Beths quest of finding an ethically conceived engagement ring, together, they determined there was a dual need of educating the public about these unethical practices while supplying the growing demand for socially responsible sourced diamonds. I was looking for an engagement ring that came with a guarantee that was not associated with diamond mining abuses, Beth said. I could not find one.

Beth and Erics Brilliant Earth supplies customers only with conict-free diamond jewelry. Photo credit: Facebook.

Beth decided to use her impending marriage as a means of separation of the death and destruction against Congolese people through the tainted process of creating bloodless diamonds ensuring that others could more easily find any piece of jewelry that was not birthed in the battlefields of war.

INVESTING IN TODAY FOR TOMORROW In 2005, Beth and Eric created Brilliant Earth, a company built on changing the jewelry business upon premise of unearthing the truth behind diamonds origins. The ingredients of a combined marketing and socially based plan became Beths recipe for pioneering success. I think that markets are changing the industry and I feel that having a demand for ethical diamonds is waking the industry up to the problems, Beth remarked. At the

RAW MATERIALS

41

Brillant Earths mission is one small step in ending the war of conict diamonds in the Congo. Photo credit: Flickr.

tions that are absent from the heinous acts such as torture, rape or child labour that are present in Congo mines, she also yearns to balance her professional mission of eradicating the shortcomings of the diamond certification standard known as the Kimberly Process. This certification attempts to prevent diamonds mined in war-inflicted countries, which are exchanged for financing weapons, to be sold in the mainstream diamond market. It was a certification that her and Alex once encountered through their long and winding maze of finding that conflict-free jewel, which in the end, turned out to be a dead-end. Brilliant Earth wanted to make sure that everything sold was produced with environmental and moral decisions in mind, Beth noted. The Kimberley Process is purely to stop the sale of war diamonds. It does not take account of wage conditions or anything else: in fact, it was not even designed to.

end of the day, it is consumers who are going to have to be the pressure to make the change. There is no other way. Paving the way for conflict-free jewelry to become an international standard, Brilliant Earth sources their diamonds from Canadian and Namibian mines. These countries are conflict-free zones, meaning that diamonds mined from these sources are unaffected by wars, human rights indignity or environmental negligence. We are particularly enthusiastic about our source of Namibian diamonds because of the value-added contributions to the local economy, said Eric, co-founder of the company. All of our Namibian diamonds are mined, cut and polished in Namibia, so by purchasing Namibian diamonds, our customers are allowing Namibia to take greater economic advantage of its diamond wealth in the future. Investing socially in communities such as DR Congo, Sierra Leone and Madagascar, Brilliant Earth donates five percent of their profits to these countries that are harmed by unethical practices via their non-profit fund to assist in land restoration, gems and precious stones education, as well as medical aid training projects, as a means of selfdevelopment and sustainment.

...think about the hate which is symbolized by the invisible ring of blood which will far outlast the notion that diamonds are for-

LOST LIVES NEEDS TO BE SEEN Most people will not witness firsthand the devastation and the literal blood, sweat and tears that the Congolese men, women and child miners put forth on a daily basis to create the rows and rows of diamonds you scrutinize and try on at your jewelry retailers glass case. Beths mission is to make the general publics vision clearer through an educative lens that, before you fall in love with the diamond ring you try on, think about the hate which is symbolized by the invisible ring of blood which will far outlast the notion that diamonds are forever. It requires a proactive and ethical jeweler to now make sure blood diamonds are not in showcases, as very few are willing to put in the effort to do so, Beth asserted. Consumers are being misled by the conflict-free diamond label. She succinctly added: It is not enough to accept a diamonds Kimberley Process certification, you have to know the practices of the mine it came from.

CERTIFICATION NEEDS A HUMAN FACE Beth chose not to cross over her own ethical line in order to help those suffering on the battle lines, by wearing a conflict-free engagement ring, which is now anchored with her equally, socially responsibly made wedding ring Through her co-creation of Brilliant Earth, her personal mission to provide legitimate wages and working condi-

READ MORE

www.brilliantearth.com