The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), which entered into force on 1 January 2003, defines a 'conflict diamond' narrowly: rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance armed conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments. From within a few years of its launch, civil society participants and a number of producing and consuming states began to argue that this definition was structurally inadequate to address the realities of twenty-first-century diamond mining, in which abuses are committed by state forces, security companies, and corrupt officials as often as by rebel armies, and in which environmental damage and worker safety are increasingly part of the conversation about ethical sourcing. The cumulative effort to expand the scheme is loosely described as the Kimberley Process reform initiative.

The 2011 Marange crisis

The single event most often cited as the catalyst for serious reform discussion is the controversy over Zimbabwe's Marange diamond fields in 2008-2011. Reports by Human Rights Watch and others alleged that Zimbabwe Defence Forces had killed civilian artisanal miners during the 2008 takeover of the fields and that subsequent industrial mining operations were marred by forced labour and corruption. The KPCS, applying its narrow definition, was unable to prevent Marange exports because the violations were committed by state actors, not by rebels. In December 2011 the Kimberley Process plenary in Kinshasa nonetheless authorised exports of Marange rough, prompting Global Witness, the founding civil society participant, to withdraw from the scheme in protest. That withdrawal has been described in trade and human-rights literature as a turning point, marking the moment at which reform shifted from internal discussion to a public legitimacy crisis.

The Washington declaration and the 2012 review

The 2012 KPCS plenary, held under U.S. chairmanship in Washington, was framed as a reform plenary. It produced an Administrative Decision establishing an Ad Hoc Committee on Review and Reform, mandated to consider, among other things, an expanded definition of 'conflict diamond' that would include systemic violence against civilians irrespective of perpetrator. The committee's discussions continued through subsequent chairmanships (South Africa 2013, China 2014, Angola 2015, UAE 2016, Australia 2017, EU 2018, India 2019, Russia 2020-2021, Botswana 2022, Zimbabwe 2023, UAE 2024), and proposals for a broadened definition have been tabled repeatedly. As of the most recent published plenary communiques, consensus on a formal expansion of the conflict-diamond definition has not been reached.

Civil society and industry positions

The civil society coalition has consistently advocated three reforms: a broader definition encompassing state-actor abuses; a strengthened review-mission system with binding consequences; and the inclusion of environmental and human-rights criteria. The diamond industry, represented through the World Diamond Council, has supported a broadened definition in principle but has emphasised that any expansion must remain practically auditable at the export-certificate stage, given the realities of artisanal production and small-scale trade. Producing states, particularly those with sensitive sovereignty concerns about external scrutiny, have generally been the most cautious participants in expansion discussions.

Parallel private-sector initiatives

Frustration with the pace of intergovernmental reform has driven the rise of parallel private-sector schemes. The Responsible Jewellery Council Code of Practices, the Diamond Producers' Association (now Natural Diamond Council) sustainability framework, the Diamond Standard programme, and individual brand-level initiatives by De Beers (Tracr, Forevermark) and others have introduced provenance and chain-of-custody standards that go materially beyond the KPCS definition. Several jurisdictions (the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada) have also introduced or proposed national restrictions on Russian-origin diamonds following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, an issue that the KPCS itself, again limited by the rebel-finance definition, has not been able to address directly.

Status

For practical purposes the reform initiative remains active but unresolved. The KPCS continues to operate as a meaningful customs-level barrier to a particular category of conflict-financing rough, and remains the principal multilateral framework through which the diamond trade engages with this set of issues. Substantive expansion of the conflict-diamond definition, however, has not yet been adopted. For the contemporary jewellery trade the practical implication is that compliance with the KPCS is necessary but not sufficient: meaningful ethical sourcing additionally requires reliance on private-sector frameworks, on chain-of-custody documentation that goes beyond the SoW, and increasingly on technological provenance solutions.