Dec 12, 2006 10:00 AM

A Trail of Diamonds by Kadir van Lohuizen

Over at Foreign Policy, there is a beautifully wrought and heart-rending photo essay called ‘A Trail of Diamonds’ by photographer Kadir Van Lohuizen about the callous exploitation of third-world citizens by the diamond trade. It takes only weeks for a diamond, once uncovered in an African mine, to travel to India to be cut and […]

Over at Foreign Policy, there is a beautifully wrought and heart-rending photo essay called 'A Trail of Diamonds' by photographer Kadir Van Lohuizen about the callous exploitation of third-world citizens by the diamond trade.

It takes only weeks for a diamond, once uncovered in an African mine, to travel to India to be cut and polished and land in the showrooms of Paris or New York. The journey reveals some of globalization’s greatest fault lines—inequality, child labor, and outsourcing—and the people who too often fall through the cracks.

Many of the Andoran peasants who claw diamonds out of the mud in 12 hour shifts are working only for food, while diamond traders start up churches and encourage the locals to trade stones for salvation. Meanwhile, in India, almost a million people — from children to the elderly — work at diamond polishing warehouses. All so some girl in New York or Paris can have a disgustingly overpriced diamond ring to go with her cliche princess wedding fantasy.

A Trail of Diamonds [Foreign Policy]

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