‘Limited Marange Exports Agreed to in St. Petersburg’ reports on how a compromise agreement allowing limited exports of diamonds from the Marange region of Zimbabwe was reached by the Kimberley Process during an extraordinary meeting of its Working Group on Monitoring (WGM). ‘The Road to St. Petersburg: Dead-lock Near the Dead Sea’ asks the question of whether to allow Zimbabwe to resume exports of Marange diamonds. ‘A Reform Agenda: How to Strengthen the KP’ was a meeting purposely held outside of the confines of the official KP meeting to allow participants the liberty to informally discuss ways to address issues that have constrained and challenged the KP in the decade since it was created. Better enforcement, institutional support, and creating a trade-related dispute mechanism are at the centre of Israel’s agenda as chair of the Kimberley Process in ‘Israel Spells Out KP Agenda.’ In ‘KP Considers Better Enforcement Strategies’ diamond revenues from producer countries should theoretically go to national treasuries for the public good, but all too often black-market profiteers benefit instead. In ‘Human Rights Activist Wins Bail,’ timing in the Zimbabwean legal system can have amazing coincidences. No more so than the case of Farai Maguwu, the Executive Director of the CRD, the leading civil society group that has exposed the smuggling and government sponsored human rights abuses in Marange.
