JERUSALEM (Commodity Online): After the Kimberley Process failed to take action against Zimbabwe for its failure to rein in blood diamond trade a new head has been appointed to head the KP.

Boaz Hirsch, chief of the international operations division in the industry, trade and labor ministry in Israel, took over the role as the head of KP.

Blood diamonds are rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance armed conflicts aimed at undermining legitimate governments in Africa. Zimbabwe’s military has been accused of helping to smuggle blood diamonds into the global diamond market.

Kimberley Process imposes extensive requirements on its members to enable them to certify shipments of rough diamonds as conflict-free.

KP participants are states and regional economic organizations that trade in rough diamonds. The Kimberley Process has 49 members, representing 75 countries, with the European Community and its member states counting as one participant.

The chairman oversees the implementation of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, the operations of the working groups and committees, and general administration.

The chairmanship rotates annually and the chairman is selected at the annual plenary meeting.

Israel, as a global center for the import and export of rough diamonds, plays a key role in maintaining the Process.

As chairman, Israel will continue to strengthen the process that was launched in 2003. Israel will lead a move to create an adjudication mechanism that will assist in solving issues that arise from time to time and require interpretation of the process’s decisions.

Israel, as one of the founders of the process, was the first country to issue a Kimberley certificate in 2003.

According to Kimberley Process reports, the only current case of rebel forces controlling diamond-producing areas is in the Ivory Coast, which constitutes less than 0.1% of the world’s total production.

According to the report, there is now much greater stability in the other countries that previously suffered from conflicts funded in part by diamonds such as Sierra Leone, Angola, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

So far, South Africa, Canada, Russia, Botswana, the European Union and India have chaired the process. Israel took over from Namibia and is expected to hand over chairmanship to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2011.

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