[ad_1]
This text is a part of our Ladies and Management particular report that coincides with world occasions in March celebrating the accomplishments of ladies. This dialog has been edited and condensed.
Her personal engagement ring led Chie Murakami into a brand new line of worldwide improvement work: bettering life for miners. As founder and chief government of Diamonds for Peace, a nongovernmental group based mostly in Japan, Ms. Murakami, 50, has been attempting to enhance the environmental and socio-economic circumstances of diamond mining communities in growing nations, significantly Liberia. The group’s mission is threefold, Ms. Murakami stated: elevating consciousness of the problems surrounding diamond mining, serving to to help the employees and offering emergency assist within the occasion of a disaster.
What made you resolve to ascertain Diamonds for Peace?
I acquired my engagement ring in 2007. I didn’t know a lot about diamonds at the moment, so I searched the web on the lookout for completely happy and enjoyable tales about diamonds. However I didn’t discover any of these, and I used to be shocked to study points like battle diamonds or youngster labor. After studying these points, I began fascinated with what I may do utilizing my expertise in worldwide improvement working in Laos, Haiti, Kenya.
Why Liberia?
I visited Sierra Leone in 2012 to see the truth after the film “Blood Diamond.” However I didn’t see a lot room for me to go in as a brand new group to do one thing. After I got here again to Japan, a Japanese good friend who used to work in Liberia as a U.N. volunteer launched me to her Liberian good friend. In 2014, he organized my journey to mining communities in Liberia so I may speak to the folks and observe how mining was carried out. Once I got here again to the Liberian capital, Monrovia, I noticed a deputy minister on the Ministry of Mines, who was main the trouble to develop a coverage to prepare all of the miners into cooperatives. As a result of I used to be fascinated with the truthful commerce of diamonds — and one of many stipulations for truthful commerce is that staff need to be organized into cooperatives or unions — I believed we had been working in the identical course.
What are some particular points affecting the artisanal mining communities in Liberia?
A significant problem is excessive poverty. A employee on the diamond mine solely will get round $300 a yr. The miners are trapped in a poverty cycle. Often, minerals belong to the federal government, in order that they need to have a mining license. Whereas many miners had a license sooner or later previously, most of them don’t have the cash to resume it, and it implies that many of the miners are mining illicitly. As a result of they don’t have a legitimate license, they can not promote their diamonds to licensed brokers or licensed sellers, so they simply promote the diamonds to an area investor who doesn’t have a license for brokerage. After which these diamonds can get smuggled to different nations.
The Liberian authorities estimates that about half of the diamonds produced in Liberia get smuggled to different nations.
What are particular tasks carried out by Diamonds for Peace in Liberia?
Often, miners mine as a result of there are not any different jobs for them in the neighborhood. To assist them diversify their sources of revenue, we launched beekeeping and fish farming.
In August 2020, we had our first beekeeping coaching in Weasua, Liberia. About 70 folks participated within the coaching with consultants from a Canadian NGO, Common Outreach Basis. We did that for 2 years. It takes time to reap honey, so the beekeepers need to be affected person.
Throughout that point, many individuals dropped out and we now have about 25 or 20 lively beekeepers. The rationale we launched beekeeping is that it’s very environment friendly. As soon as beekeepers deploy the hives within the close by forest, they will handle the hives solely as soon as per week, for five or 10 minutes per hive. They only want to scrub and verify contained in the hive. That enables them to mine on the similar time.
They’ll promote honey with none downside as a result of demand could be very excessive.
What are different steps the group has taken?
We purpose to extend data and expertise associated to diamonds and diamond mining. We did a primary two-day coaching on tough diamond grading and analysis, by which we invited representatives from 17 mining communities.
We taught them what diamonds had been used for, and that the worth relies on the worth of polished diamonds. We additionally present them coaching on accountable diamond mining. Many consider the diamonds are simply discovered randomly they usually simply dig wherever. However there’s a extra environment friendly and scientific technique to discover the place diamonds could also be. In one other workshop, we taught them how one can course of the minerals extra effectively, and to reclaim the land with the assistance of an American diamond mining specialist.
The place do the funds come from?
Primarily from grants, at the moment from the Japan Fund for International Atmosphere.
And the essential coaching on tough diamond grading analysis was funded by the World Financial institution. Different particular person donors and company members are supporting us, equivalent to jewellery designer Mio Harutaka.
Are there feminine miners in Liberia?
In the neighborhood we work in, now we have a number of feminine miners.. On the workshops, males are inclined to have extra resistance to what we train. However I feel girls are extra accepting and extra open to the brand new issues we carry.
[ad_2]
Source link
