I was on BBC1’s Heaven and Earth Show With Gloria Hunniford on Sunday morning to discuss the week’s news. One of the topics I spoke about was that of conflict diamonds. It is a hot topic at the moment because of the new film Blood Diamond which I went to see in London’s West End last week.

There’s a message written in text at the end of the movie telling viewers to demand diamonds that aren’t from conflict zones, but that message goes entirely against what the film actually said, which is that such attempts are doomed to failure. The film centres around a Sierra Leone-based diamond smuggler, Danny Archer, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Although Sierra Leone isn’t able to export diamonds, Archer uses sheep to smuggle diamonds across the border into Liberia, which of course becomes a major exporter.

On Sunday’s show, they had a pre-recorded interview with a spokesperson from Global Witness, a non-governmental organisation, who said that although it’s often claimed that diamonds are conflict free, actually a lot of conflict diamonds enter the supply undetected.

Bans on conflict diamonds sound like a good idea. They enable rich countries to feel that they are doing something. In reality they are little more than a token gesture, not combined with any real measures to stop conflict. Whether we talk about Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Darfur, Liberia, Congo or Somalia, the rich countries’ approach to conflict has been lacking, to say the least.