The EU is working to sanction Russian diamonds but has faced challenges due to the diamond trade market in Belgium.
**Background:** Diamonds from the Russian mine Alrosa, partly owned by the country’s government, account for 25% of rough diamond imports into Antwerp, Belgium, a prominent diamond trading city.
* Russia is a major supplier of diamonds globally, and Belgian traders argue that if the EU bans the gems, they will just find alternate markets like Dubai.
**Challenges:** Tracking the origin of a diamond is difficult, as diamonds from various sources are often mixed and resold multiple times before reaching the customer.
* The current certification system, the Kimberley Process, only traces the stone’s origin when it leaves the mine and doesn’t track it afterward.
**Possible solutions:** Some companies, like Brilliant Earth, use blockchain technology to record and trace a diamond from mine to showroom by documenting its custody chain in an immutable database.
* A unified approach in the diamond industry to trace diamonds might pave the way for an EU ban on Russian diamonds.
[Go deeper](https://www.npr.org/2023/04/09/1168839350/the-eu-is-trying-to-sanction-diamonds-from-russia)
*This summary was created by an AI system.*
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