Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-14. I compliment the member for Nepean--Carleton for his extraordinary work and also our ambassador to Italy, Robert Fowler, who did an extraordinary job in Angola in articulating the role of diamonds and the trafficking of illegal arms in a murky world that causes the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people every year.
Let us get to the heart of the matter. This process is important to save the lives of millions of people around the world. Blood diamonds, as we have heard, are diamonds that are mined and sold illegally. They are the fuel of conflicts from west Africa, Guinea and Sierra Leone. They are fuelled by the tyrant Charles Taylor, down through central Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, into Zimbabwe and down into Angola.
These diamonds are mined under conditions of absolute slavery. People get a few dollars for them. The diamonds are taken into a murky world. They flow into the diamond marketing areas of Antwerp and Tel Aviv where they are mixed with legal diamonds and sold in return for weapons and other illicit contraband. In fact, diamonds as well as other resources such as timber, semi-precious stones, and coltan, the material we use in our computers, are used to fuel conflicts in most of Africa.
The irony of the continent of Africa is that while it is the poorest continent in the world, it is also the richest in terms of resources. However these resources have been taken and used by brutal, evil people like Charles Taylor, Robert Mugabe and others to fuel their own conflicts, line their own pockets, and murder innocent civilians.
Perhaps the most egregious example is what happened in Sierra Leone involving rebels under the leadership of a man by the name of Foday Sanko, the head of a group called RUF. Rebels is really not the word we should use. We should call them thugs. They would go into an area where there were diamonds, and any people who were there would be lined up and given the choice of right or left, meaning did they want their right or left arm chopped off. With children, they would make arbitrary decisions, chopping off legs or limbs. Why? They would do this to scare those people out of the region or to force them to mine the diamonds, the same diamonds that people wear here at home on their rings. Perhaps half of the diamonds that are worn on people's hands in our country and in the west are blood diamonds that came from these bloody origins, where innocent people had their limbs chopped off so that we could enjoy these diamonds.
The key is to separate the diamonds that are from countries like Botswana and South Africa from illegally mined diamonds, and to enable countries that are in conflict to use the diamonds and the resources they have for the people in their countries as a tool for prosperity, not as a tool for death and destruction. This process would start a way for us to ensure those diamonds would be tracked. We can sell good diamonds that are going to help people in these impoverished countries while not allowing illegal diamonds on the market.
These illegal diamonds, coltan, semi-precious stones, timber and other resources are used to fuel the conflicts we see primarily in Africa. Perhaps conflict is not the right word to use. There is no war going on. It is basic thuggery and banditry by groups that call themselves rebel groups but who secure areas that are rich in resources. That is what the RUF did in Sierra Leone, supported by the evil Charles Taylor who is the head of Liberia and who garners money from this process. He is a thug and a murderer.
It is also happening in Zimbabwe. President Robert Mugabe took his army into the Congo, not for any strategic reasons but so that he could control diamond mines. He extracts these diamonds and pays off his military supporters and cronies. These diamonds then go into Antwerp, Tel Aviv and the Ukraine in exchange for funds to pad his pockets and also to buy weapons that enable his army to secure control and abuse his people. That is what is going on right now in that country. Zimbabwe was in the Congo, not for any strategic purpose other than to secure the resources in the eastern Congo for Mugabe's own benefit.
What happened to the people of the Congo? Two million people have died in the Congo in the last two years. More people die in the Congo every single day than died in the twin towers in New York on September 11 a little over a year ago. They die every day and no one is saying anything about this.
Similarly, in Angola, a country that has oil resources that are equivalent to that in the North Sea, people are dying despite the United Nations feeding program centres. They are starving to death in a land of plenty. That is the irony of the situation. I cannot believe the lack of engagement and the complete lack of congruence in our foreign policy.
The amount of aid we throw at a problem is not equivalent to addressing and dealing with the problem. Most of the countries in Africa under conflict that are the poorest countries in the world, ironically are some of the richest in the world in terms of resources in diamonds, semi-precious stones, timber, hydro power, et cetera.
The reason why these countries are under threat and the people are so poor and dying of starvation in the midst of plenty is that their leaders are corrupt, venal, evil people who use their power to line their pockets and those of their cronies who keep them in power. The people die, are tortured and subjected to slavery, and what do we do? Nothing.
It puts into disrepute the international organizations that we are a member of, be it the Commonwealth or the United Nations. The pillars of the treaties that we use to support those organizations are not worth the paper they are printed on because we do not have the will to live up to those treaties. Treaties are only as good as the will of the international community.
The United Nations and the Commonwealth are paper tigers because they will not act in the face of holocausts. For example, there is a holocaust taking place right now in southern Africa. Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is using food as a weapon. He is taking food and preventing his people from eating, putting at risk six million lives. Six million people will potentially die in his country over the next six months, and what are we doing about it? Nothing, absolutely nothing.
Every year we commemorate the Holocaust and say never again. We say that if the same situation were taking place as it did in eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s we would stand up and intervene and do something about it. The fact of the matter is, we do not. Whether we look at the former Yugoslavia; Zimbabwe right now; Angola, where two million people have died; the Democratic Republic of Congo, where two million have died; Sierra Leone; Guinea; or wherever we choose where millions of people have died, what do we do? We do nothing, which puts into disrepute the instruments and treaties that we worked so hard to put together.
If the government and the Prime Minister want to have an African agenda, not only would they have to actively pursue the Kimberley Process, but they would have to address the three main c's of why Africa is not developing. Africa is not developing because of corruption, conflict and a lack of capacitance.
Corruption, a lack of good governance and a lack of judicial structures prevent the people from investing in their own countries and prevent international investors from enabling development to take place sustainably in these countries. The harbingers of conflict are there for months, if not years in advance, and yet we choose to do nothing about it. Penalties are paid in horrible ways by the innocent civilians who live there, as we have heard today, by the chopping off of limbs and other egregious things.
Millions die and we do nothing about it. Primary health and education is where we should be putting our money on the sharp edge.
HIV-AIDS is tied to capacitance. In many of these countries 25% to 50% of the population is HIV positive. One-quarter to half the people in these countries will die, destroying the economic backbone of these countries. What are we doing about it? Not a lot.
The Kimberley Process is good but it has to take place in conjunction with other issues; the trafficking of weapons and what is going on in the diamond centres in Antwerp and Tel Aviv.
We must make a greater effort to put our own house in order because these countries would not be under conflict if we did not economically support these conflicts by wilfully and knowingly buy these products that are attached to the murder of innocent civilians.
I compliment the member for Nepean--Carleton on what he has done. The House should support the bill, perhaps with a few minor amendments to make it stronger. I look forward to the ratification process that would ensure that more than 50 countries in the world would ratify this treaty so we can bring it into force.