The Kimberley Process, a new actor on the conflict resolution scene?

In 2003, the Kimberley Process, a public-private partnership gathering governments, the diamond industry and several civil society organizations, entered into force. This international scheme, aiming at fighting against conflict diamonds, imposed export bans on diamonds from the Marange Fields in the Eastern part of Zimbabwe and from the Central African Republic. Indeed, evidence of violations of the minimum requirements of the Kimberley Process were found in the two countries, due to their fragile political situation. By sending targeted sanctions against conflict diamonds, the Kimberley Process acted as a conflict resolution body, which makes these sanctions the first partially imposed by the private sector. In order to measure the effectiveness of the sanctions, a two-level approach was used, first focusing on whether the sanctions attained the political objectives of the sanction, and then on assessing whether the enforcement of the sanction impaired the achievement of the objectives. I found that the two sanctions targeted on conflict diamonds from the Marange Fields and from the Central African Republic failed on both levels of analysis. The study points out that the Kimberley Process has neither the capacity nor the ability to resolve conflict autonomously.