blood diamonds and africas armed conflict summary review

It is one of several producing diamonds - estimated to be worth more than $20 mn - that have been smuggled into Mali and Ghana to help fund arms purchases, in violation of UN sanctions. Meanwhile, in the northern part of neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire, a rebel faction controls a large open-pit diamond mine in the town of Seguela. They demanded that the authorities send police to halt illegal gold mining on a hill considered sacred by the local Lobi community. Police blocked the march, but a dozen protesters were able to present their grievances to the provincial high commissioner. The same month the UNDP released its report, more than 1,000 kilometres away in the town of Gaoua in Burkina Faso, about 150 demonstrators armed with cutlasses, clubs and bows and arrows tried to march to a meeting of the newly elected municipal council. “People know that they will not be allowed to enjoy the benefits of our oil unless they fight,” one rebel leader in Warri told an investigator for the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental research and advocacy organization based in Brussels. Many local residents believe that the government, military and foreign oil companies are not doing nearly enough to correct this situation. The area’s “vast oil wealth has barely touched people’s lives,” noted the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in a July 2006 report on human development in the Niger Delta. The unrest has been stoked by popular frustrations over poverty, pollution and heavy-handed security tactics.

The fighting has claimed many lives and sporadically disrupted the country’s main export sector. For years, Nigeria’s oil-rich southern delta region has been the scene of repeated armed clashes among local residents, dissident groups and the military and police.

Blood diamonds and africas armed conflict summary review