ABSTRACT
In 1997, the international media spotlight briefly turned to Angola's lengthy civil war. Princess Diana, a champion in the fight to ban landmines, walked through a mine field in her visit to Angola early that year. It marked the beginning of an important year for the landmine campaign. In December 1997, 133 countries signed the Ottawa Treaty, banning anti-personnel landmines. During much of Angola's civil war and most successfully in the mid 1990s, UNITA sought and established tight control of both formal and informal alluvial areas as well as kimberlite mines. Kimberlite diamonds are mined with capital intensive machinery that extracts the diamonds directly from a volcanic pipe. However, in 1997 UNITA intensified its violations against the cease fire and the Lusaka peace deal and the 1997 unity government collapsed. In December 1998, six months after UNSC Res. 1173, Global Witness published A Rough Trade, the first NGO publication of what later became known as the campaign against conflict diamonds.
