In the 1990’s and early 2000’s there was a war in Sierra Leone for control of the country’s most valuable natural resource, diamonds. Diamonds from the country that were mined and sold during that war were referred to as “blood diamonds”, an acknowledgement of the war and bloodshed that was caused by the diamonds. This conflict is also referenced in the Kanye West song, “Diamonds of Sierra Leone”.

Diamonds are a huge industry in Sierra Leone; employing more than 300,000 people according to Roy Maconachie of The Conversation. While the diamond mining industry has made some people very rich, Sierra Leone is still one of the poorest countries in the world. This is due to the way the diamonds are sold. The miners are paid a very small base pay per day. When they are lucky enough to come across some diamonds, they must sell it to their boss, who in turn will give them half of the value. The value is also much less when it is straight from the mine than it is when it has been cut and polished and becomes the finished product you see in the Diamond District.

More developed countries contributed to the conflict, because they continued to purchase the blood diamonds, as they were much cheaper than other diamonds that were on the market at the time. Conflict or blood diamonds were not and are not a large percentage of the diamond sales in the world, causing a disproportionate amount of damage throughout the civil war in Sierra Leone. There has been an effort to crackdown on the buying and selling of conflict diamonds by the global community as those diamonds mined in the 90’s and early 2000’s in Sierra Leone were used to by weapons and fuel the war that was being waged over the control of said diamonds.