Blood Diamonds

Diamond mine in Congo
Rights reserved to Artist

Environmental impact
Rights reserved to Artist

       With Thanksgiving behind us and Christmas only 23 days away many people have already began their holiday shopping. I know most people hit the town bright and early on Black Friday to do just that. How many of you are shopping for jewelry or think you might be receiving jewelry for the holidays? Have you ever given any thought to where those beautiful diamonds are coming from? I'm sure you have all heard of a Blood Diamonds. The term Blood Diamond is used when diamonds are mined in a war zone, often by forced labor, and used to fund military and rebel militia movements. Most of these precious stones are mined in Africa, 65% of the world's diamonds come from there. Sure they are gorgeous and sparkly but every day thousands of innocent people are raped, tortured and killed over them. In the past two decades alone seven African countries have endured brutal civil conflicts caused by Diamonds, Liberia and the Republic of Congo being a few of them. In 2003 the Clean Diamond Act was put into place, and now years later some companies like Zales are straight up refusing to buy these conflict diamonds, Vendors are now required to show proof of warranty from their sources of diamond merchandise.http://www.zales.com/jewelry101/index.jsp?page=diamonds_conflictdiamonds With all of these efforts somehow this conflict diamond industry still goes on. It makes me wonder what else can we really do ? What if this was our country? Would you pay closer attention, would you stop buying diamonds all together? I hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving and thank you for reading!!

                                                                    ~Camberlynn