Central Africa Republic wins bid to lift embargo on its diamonds

The Central African Republic (CAR) said Friday it has convinced the regulatory body for global diamond trading to end a decade-old export embargo.

Authorities in Bangui said the Kimberley Process (KP) regulatory body had accepted its request at its plenary assembly in Dubai.

The decision came towards the close of the four-day meeting being hosted under the presidency of the United Arab Emirates.

The KP has agreed to the "total lifting of the sanction," CAR's mining ministry said on its official Facebook page.

Civil war

Bangui had campaigned for months to end an embargo imposed in 2013 amid a civil war in a country marked by decades of violence, instability and coups.

Mines and Geology Minister Rufin Benam Beltoungou had told visiting KP experts in September that the "the conditions (for lifting the embargo) are now met since, on our side, the security problem no longer arises".

He added on that occasion that "the minimum traceability requirement" for so-called blood diamonds had been resolved.

Although the country's conflict lost intensity in 2018, the country still suffers bouts of violence and remains deeply poor.

'Blood diamonds'

The embargo to prevent the export of "blood diamonds" mined in conflict zones had decimated a trade worth around $50 million in 2011.

There had been a partial relaxing of the ban in 2015 and 2018 but only benefiting around one third of 24 diamond mining zones in the country.

Gem quality diamond deposits make up - together with gold - one of the CAR's most precious resources.

Mining and research permits have been issued to Chinese, American, Rwandan and also Russian groups linked to the Wagner mercenary group backing the ruling regime.

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