The World Diamond Council (WDC) has expressed “profound regret” that a small number of Kimberley Process (KP) participants blocked consensus on the long-awaited reforms it said were designed to strengthen protections for Africa’s diamond-mining communities.

For three years, the KP Review and Reform Committee worked on “the most ambitious reform effort in more than 20 years”. That work brought the KP closer to a modernised definition of conflict diamonds and to the explicit protection of mining communities.

Despite this convergence, a consensus was denied. The WDC said this was not because the evidence was disputed, nor because alternatives were proposed, but because a few participants allegedly chose “politics over people”.

“Progress was blocked not because the definition was weak, not because participants wanted better language, but because some demanded that the KP take on matters that fall outside its authority. They wanted this system to reach into sovereign decisions and State actions, something it cannot do because it is not a political or a security body. Progress was killed in pursuit of the impossible.

“Today, some signalled that the lives of diamond miners in Africa are not as valuable as lives elsewhere. They signalled that protection is a privilege, not a principle,” WDC president Feriel Zerouki said at the weekend.

A majority supported expanding the KP definition to include the modern forms of violence affecting mining regions.

The proposed reform package included extending the definition of conflict diamonds to cover violence carried out by armed groups beyond traditional rebel movements, including militias, mercenaries, organised criminal networks, private military and security companies, and other non-State actors.

It also sought to explicitly recognise the diamond-mining communities within the KP's mandate of protection, while adding armed conflict and systematic or widespread violence to the list of actions covered by the KP.

According to the WDC, these updates reflected international best practice, while the research underpinning them, which was shared repeatedly over three years, was never challenged, nor was contrary evidence ever presented.

Despite its disappointment, the WDC reiterated its strong belief in the KP as a global platform that remained indispensable.

“Today’s outcome is not a failure of the KP. Most participants stood firmly behind Africa. The setback came from a few, not from the process itself. And while they halted progress today, they cannot halt the direction of travel,” Zerouki said.

She called on all KP participants to use the moment as a reminder to ensure the KP’s work to protect diamond mining communities continued.

“Hope is not a strategy. Hope must now become pressure, accountability and consequence. We will continue, relentlessly, to fight for a KP worthy of the lives it is meant to protect,” Zerouki said.