We Will use it to make it Strong: The Stories of Blood Diamonds in Sierra Leone

“It has been said that war is the price of peace… Angola and Sierra Leone have already paid too much. Let them live a better life.”
-Ambassador Juan Larrain



As the reality of my summer journey in Kariobangi, Kenya is coming closer, I have looked at packing and what I need to bring. One of the things we’re told to pack is a couple of books and I have decided to bring a classic and contemporary novel as well as a non-fiction book entitled A Long Way Gone which depicts the journey of a boy soldier through Sierra Leone. A couple years back, Blood Diamond directed by Edward Zwick and starring Leonardo DiCaprio came to theatres and I watched not knowing what to expect and left with some knowledge on Sierra Leone and the atrocities that have happened there.

The thing that gets me most annoyed and angry in the world are crimes against children. Perhaps it is because they are seen to be more innocent then any adult or because they are so young to not understand what they are doing. In Sierra Leone, child soldiers were at no shortage and the people who were training these children were also brainwashing them and taking away their dignity. I am not a proponent of gun laws and do not believe that people carrying around guns is a good idea period. I understand that some countries believe this to be a right but there is nothing in my life that is going to convince me that carrying guns is ever going to be remotely all right. In Sierra Leone, children not only carried guns but also were trained on the fastest way to kill and execute and children did just that.

What was most poignant in the film was too watch the son turn away from his father played by Djimon Hounsou. You would think that nothing could break the bond between father and child but for child soldiers they are trained in a way where their perception of reality is skewed to a point that they don’t understand the crimes they are committing. Protecting children and largely protecting people need to continue to be at the forefront of foreign policy decisions. There is no reason that compassion cannot be a driving force in foreign policy decision-making. It is a difficult formula to live by but the possibilities really become endless.

Moments in the Blood Diamond confirmed something I’ve thought a lot about: the lack of education and understanding of the people. In the book, Beyond Borders read last term Cry the Beloved Country; Africans fled to Johannesburg because they believed it was the land of opportunity- not only was this not the case but it was the path to ultimate danger and poverty. In Blood Diamond, some of the informants truly believed that searching for the resources are what was going to make their country rich citing “We will use it to make it strong” but this was just another unsubstantiated argument made by profitable diamond agencies to people who were uneducated. There is a responsibility of consumers to make sure their diamonds are conflict free because there are no guarantees but again in the search for luxury, to often the ethical questions are never asked not because people don’t care but because they are themselves uneducated on the impact their consumer dollar has on the rest of the world.

We see diamonds in enclosed cases with fancy gold bands, what we don’t see is the work it takes to find those diamonds and the work that goes into producing them sometimes costing people their lives. If anyone in the western world had to work for a diamond like the people did in Sierra Leone, then diamonds would no longer be a commodity because what it really is: Savage.

I understand that there is no easy fix and that the idea of human rights being at the forefront of foreign policy is difficult to engage but the more I read and find atrocities in our world the more difficult it seems to help. In Canada, right now; our government is being brought up on a charge of contempt. Opposition parties can call a non-confidence vote as early as this Thursday throwing out the Harper government. What many thought would take a month for the budget to be voted down might now happen on Thursday. These are serious issues, contempt is a serious allegation but even these serious democratic charges are nothing compared to an overthrow and coup that limits human rights and send Neanderthals to power with no promise of righteousness.

The lesson that I have taken away from Edward Zwick’s film Blood Diamond is our ability to make a choice when we purchase a product. Lets pay attention to the details of what we are purchasing. Do we know where this product is from? How is this product made? Why are we buying this product? It starts with something as small as toilet paper and evolves into that diamond engagement ring.

This seventeen-year-old lost both hands to rebels’ machetes. Waterloo camp, Sierra Leone, 1998. UNICEF / HQ96-0566 / Giacomo Pirozzi

For More Information:

Blood Diamond. Dir. Edward Zwick. Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, Djimon Hounsou. Warner Brothers [USA]. 2006. DVD.

http://www.un.org/peace/africa/Diamond.html