This is a free public event.
The diamond wars of the past 15 years took the lives of more than three million Africans, crippling the economies of Angola, the Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The biggest UN peacekeeping forces in the world – in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Congo and Côte d’Ivoire, have been the legacy of conflict diamonds. Ian Smillie will tell the story of how diamonds, precious symbols of love and wealth, became so corrupted and dangerous, how a human rights campaign led to a global certification system, and how a new challenge may turn diamonds from a curse into an engine for development in some of the world’s poorest countries.
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