Global Witness - Breaking the links between natural resources, conflict and corruption
Wars need money. Natural resources such as timber, diamonds and minerals play an increasingly prominent role in providing this money, which is often used to fund armies and militias who murder, rape and commit other human rights abuses against civilians.
Global Witness' Natural Resources in Conflict team works to break the links between natural resources and conflict by influencing international, regional and national policies after carrying out in-depth investigations. Our work consists of:
- Campaigning to prevent future conflicts, and curbing current ones, by denying combatants any income from the trade in natural resources. Global Witness' past successes in this field include closing off the lucrative timber trade of both Charles Taylor's despotic regime in Liberia and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the conflict diamonds campaign, which gave rise to the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme to prevent the trade in conflict diamonds, all of which have hastened the end of some of the world's most brutal wars. Currently, Global Witness is researching the trade in diamonds and cocoa in Cote d'Ivoire.
- Working in post-conflict countries such as Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to ensure that crucial investment in the natural resource sector is equitable, sustainable, transparent and non-corrupt, and brings long-term benefit to the state and the population, thereby helping to prevent the seeds of future conflict.
- Reforming international policy, especially pushing for the international community, at UN level, to adopt a definition of conflict resources which could be used to trigger action to prevent natural resources from fuelling conflict, and which could form the basis of revised national laws allowing people who trade in conflict resources to be prosecuted.
Latest Publications
June 2009
Governments urged to renew commitments as diamond meeting closes
Some progress at Kimberley Process diamond meeting but governments must do more to ensure scheme's effectiveness
Blood Diamonds - Time to Plug the Gaps
The landmark Kimberley Process is in danger of losing its credibility, civil society groups warn today, ahead of a key meeting of the scheme established to stop the trade in blood diamonds.
Verdict on UN Climate Change Talks in Bonn
Global Witness campaigner, Davyth Stewart, reflects on tough week of negotiations in Bonn, which yielded mixed results
Briefing note on imminent oil supply crunch
Global Witness is calling for governments to officially and publicly declare that there is an imminent
oil supply crunch and to take urgent measures to develop safe and sustainable alternative energy
systems
ECA Press Conference at Bonn
Going backwards or forwards on Forests and Climate? Environment groups under the bannner of the Ecosystems Climate Alliance hold joint press conference in Bonn as UN Climate Change meeting draws to a close
Global Groups Call for End to Deforestation in Bonn
Global coalition calls on negotiators to deliver a strong climate deal, warning that they will put all of our survival at risk if they do not act immediately to halt deforestation and the industrial logging of the world's primary forests
Global Witness hails commitment of veteran diamond campaigner
Global Witness today paid tribute to the efforts and commitment of Ian Smillie, a founding member of the Kimberley Process, who has decided to end his participation in the rough diamond certification scheme.
