| Date | 1 December 2000 |
|---|---|
| Started | 15:00 |
| Ended | 18:00 |
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The President
I give the floor to the representative of South Africa to introduce draft resolution A/55/L.52.
Mr. Kumalo (South Africa)
I have the honour to introduce draft resolution A/55/L.52, entitled "The role of diamonds in fuelling conflict: breaking the link between the illicit transaction of rough diamonds and armed conflict as a contribution to prevention and settlement of conflicts."
Ordinarily, diamonds are a very precious commodity. Besides their intrinsic value, diamonds are also purchased for their beauty. However, some of the trade in these much-desired stones has an ugly side as well. We will never be able to forget the sight of the children of Sierra Leone whose missing limbs were brutally hacked off by crazed killers funded by the profits of the illicit trade in conflict diamonds, or the displacement and deaths of hundreds of thousands of Angolan citizens by the diamond-funded UNITA rebels.
It is important to emphasize, however, that conflict diamonds make up only about four per cent of the total world diamond market. That means that 96 per cent of the world's diamonds are in fact "prosperity diamonds". This legitimate trade in diamonds is critical to economic development in many countries. Thousands of families in my country and across our region owe their livelihoods to the mining and sale of legitimate diamonds.
The sponsors of this draft resolution firmly believe that the United Nations must take steps to address the issue of conflict diamonds. We believe this can be done through concerted international coordination and action. This will prove that the international community is neither powerless nor silent on the issue of conflict diamonds. We hope that Member States will join in making a strong, clear and unambiguous statement that the world is able and ready to act decisively in breaking the link between illicit transactions of rough diamonds and armed conflict.
The draft resolution is a result of a process that first started in Kimberley in May 2000. Further meetings were held in Luanda, London and Windhoek. Those meetings became known as the Kimberley Process, named after the South African city in which diamonds were first mined commercially, in 1879. The Kimberley Process evolved out of an inclusive approach by Governments, industry and civil society in the diamond exporting, processing and importing States to find solutions to the problem of conflict diamonds. On 21 September, 16 countries participated in a ministerial meeting of the Kimberley Process in Pretoria.
The Kimberley Process sought to stop conflict diamonds from entering the legitimate diamond market, thereby denying rebel movements income to finance military efforts aimed at undermining or overthrowing legitimate Governments. The process thus protects the legitimate diamond market while clearly signalling the intention of all parties involved to address conflict diamonds in a meaningful and practical manner.
South Africa expects that the Kimberley Process will lead to the creation and implementation of an international certification scheme for rough diamonds. That certification scheme will inform national certification schemes that are functional and have legal enforcement capacities to monitor, regulate and control diamond transactions. In our region of sSouthern Africa, countries such as Botswana, Namibia and South Africa have already designed systems to monitor the production and marketing of diamonds originating within their borders. Similar important initiatives have already been taken by the Governments of Angola and Sierra Leone to address the problem of conflict diamonds. It is for these reasons that my delegation wishes to urge that resources be made available to assist more countries to develop national diamond certification schemes with legal enforcement capacities.
In developing this draft resolution, the countries represented in the Kimberley Process have sought to create a broad, yet comprehensive, approach to addressing the problem of conflict diamonds. We are mindful also that both the diamond industry and Government must adopt sustainable development approaches. Diamond industries are valuable sources of employment, foreign exchange, tax revenue and investments. We are also conscious of the responsibility of the diamond industry to rehabilitate the environment and infrastructure of communities that may be disturbed or disrupted where mining activities take place.
The draft resolution acknowledges the role of conflict diamonds in fuelling conflicts and their devastating impact on peace, safety and security for all people in affected countries. It further highlights the use of conflict diamonds by rebel movements to finance their activities, including attempts to undermine or overthrow legitimate Governments. Furthermore, it emphasises that measures taken against conflict diamonds should be effective, pragmatic and consistent with international law. The need to enforce Security Council resolutions is also highlighted.
My Government looks forward to an enlarged Kimberley Process to include all key countries with significant interests in the diamond industry. We believe that a partnership between government, industry and civil society will protect the legitimate industry from any unintended negative impacts.
My delegation is pleased that this draft resolution has attracted a very large number of sponsors. I hope that the General Assembly will support this important initiative by adopting the draft resolution by consensus.
We are aware that there are Member States that have difficulties with parts of this draft resolution. It took the countries of the Kimberley Process many weeks to finally arrive at this compromise text. We acknowledge that it may not cover every issue and every nuance of this important debate. However, we hope it will earn the Assembly's support for one major reason, namely, that those who trade in illicit conflict diamonds must be left with the clear and unambiguous message that the United Nations is determined to act decisively to break the link between the illicit transaction of rough diamonds and armed conflict.
Mr. Holbrooke (United States)
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| <type 'exceptions.UnicodeEncodeError'> | Python 2.6.6: /usr/bin/python Fri May 24 13:55:23 2013 |
A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred.
| /data/vhost/www.undemocracy.com/docs/trunk.py in |
| 194 if __name__ == "__main__": |
| 195 pathpart = os.getenv("PATH_INFO") |
| 196 maintrunk(pathpart) |
| 197 |
| 198 |
| maintrunk = <function maintrunk>, pathpart = '/generalassembly_55/meeting_79' |
| /data/vhost/www.undemocracy.com/docs/trunk.py in maintrunk(pathpart='/generalassembly_55/meeting_79') |
| 131 elif pagefunc == "gameeting": |
| 132 LogIncomingDB(hmap["docid"], hmap["gadice"] or "0", referrer, ipaddress, useragent, remadeurl) |
| 133 WriteHTML(hmap["htmlfile"], hmap["pdfinfo"], hmap["gadice"], hmap["highlightdoclink"]) |
| 134 elif pagefunc == "agendanumexpanded": |
| 135 LogIncomingDB(pagefunc, hmap["agendanum"], referrer, ipaddress, useragent, remadeurl) |
| global WriteHTML = <function WriteHTML>, hmap = {'docid': 'A-55-PV.79', 'gadice': '', 'gameeting': 79, 'gasession': 55, 'highlightdoclink': None, 'htmlfile': '/home/undemocracy/undata/html/A-55-PV.79.html', 'pagefunc': 'gameeting', 'pdfinfo': <pdfinfo.PdfInfo instance>} |
| /home/undemocracy/unparse-live/web2/unpvmeeting.py in WriteHTML(fhtml='/home/undemocracy/undata/html/A-55-PV.79.html', pdfinfo=<pdfinfo.PdfInfo instance>, gadice='', highlightth=None) |
| 322 if dclass == "spoken": |
| 323 if not gadice or agendagidcurrent == gadice: |
| 324 WriteSpoken(gid, dtextmu, councilpresidentnation) |
| 325 elif dclass == "subheading": |
| 326 if agendagidcurrent and (not gadice or agendagidcurrent == gadice): |
| global WriteSpoken = <function WriteSpoken>, gid = u'pg002-bk01', dtextmu = u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">Mr. Holb...come a symbol of terror and hardship forever.</p>', councilpresidentnation = None |
| /home/undemocracy/unparse-live/web2/unpvmeeting.py in WriteSpoken(gid=u'pg002-bk01', dtext=u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">Mr. Holb...come a symbol of terror and hardship forever.</p>', councilpresidentnation=None) |
| 69 print '</cite>' |
| 70 |
| 71 print dtext[mspek.end(0):] |
| 72 |
| 73 print '</div>' |
| dtext = u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">Mr. Holb...come a symbol of terror and hardship forever.</p>', mspek = <_sre.SRE_Match object>, mspek.end = <built-in method end of _sre.SRE_Match object> |
<type 'exceptions.UnicodeEncodeError'>: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe9' in position 2229: ordinal not in range(128)
args =
('ascii', u'\n\t<p id="pg002-bk01-pa01">I am honoured to be he...come a symbol of terror and hardship forever.</p>', 2229, 2230, 'ordinal not in range(128)')
encoding =
'ascii'
end =
2230
message =
''
object =
u'\n\t<p id="pg002-bk01-pa01">I am honoured to be he...come a symbol of terror and hardship forever.</p>'
reason =
'ordinal not in range(128)'
start =
2229