In the KP, familiar battle lines are drawn

New York--When the Kimberley Process intersessional meeting ended last week one of the unresolved issues was the future leadership of the organization, an issue that became somewhat clearer this week.

On Tuesday, Alan Martin, research director for Partnership Africa Canada, one of the non-governmental organizations in the KP’s Civil Society Coalition, confirmed reports that after “much confusion” Australia has withdrawn its bid to become the vice chair of the Kimberley Process in 2015.

When asked why the country decided to remove itself from vice chair consideration, Rami Baron, president of the Diamond Dealers Club of Australia,  said based on the feedback he received from those who attended the meeting, it boiled down to the fact that “someone needed to compromise to resolve the impasse and in this case it was Australia.” (Complete consensus is needed to make any decisions within the KP.)

Rebecca Bryant, leader of the Australian delegation to KP, did not respond to request for comment.

Australia’s apparent withdrawal leaves the United Arab Emirates as the sole candidate to become vice chair of the KP for 2015 and, ultimately, lead the process as chair in 2016. (Under the KP bylaws, the vice chair takes over as chair the following year.)

But Martin said “concerns remain” over the UAE’s bid to become chair, adding that “it is not a done deal.”

Member nations of the KP have been divided over which nation will serve as the 2015 vice chair since the end of last year.

Nations including Russia, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo backed a bid for the UAE to become vice chair while United States, Israel, Canada and Botswana supported Australia. Since a complete consensus is needed to pass anything in the KP, no vice chair was chosen.

At the center of the vice chair controversy are the NGOs of the KP’s Civil Society Coalition, which have been locked in a bitter battle with the UAE for the last two years.

One particularly explosive moment between the UAE and NGOs occurred at the 2013 Angola Centenary Diamond Conference, when Dubai Diamond Exchange Chairman Peter Meeus accused the NGOs involved in the KP of essentially fabricating stories about violence in diamond-producing areas of Zimbabwe and Angola in order to maintain their relevance and funding.

NGO leaders fired back, with Martin saying that Meeus’s speech would be “slanderous if it were not so ludicrous.”