ABSTRACT
In 1999, European advocacy groups launched an international campaign calling for consumers “not to support terror.” 1 This Fatal Transactions campaign denounced the trade of “conflict diamonds” financing wars in Angola and Sierra Leone, or “terror diamonds” funding Al Qaeda. By superimposing the amputated limbs of war victims on diamond-ringed fingers of brides, or pricing diamonds in deaths rather than dollars, Fatal Transactions campaigners conveyed a powerful message: consuming is killing. Faced with the threat of massive financial losses through a diamond boycott, major diamond industry interests finally acknowledged the problem after years of neglecting or denying the role of the diamonds trade in funding conflicts. To avoid a boycott, the industry stressed that most of the trade had no blood on its hands, that millions of jobs and entire economies were at stake, and that a diamond certification system could remove conflict diamonds from the legitimate diamonds trade.
