REMOTE SENSING FOR KIMBERLEY PROCESS MONITORING OF ROUGH DIAMOND EXPORTS FROM THE CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

The Central African Republic’s (CAR) mineral sector is well known for its high-quality diamond and gold reserves and production. Since 1960, the sector has been impacted by changing governance regimes and priorities, internal conflict, international sanctions, external control due to foreign seizure, smuggling, and fraud. In 2013, in response to the (still-in-progress, decade-long) civil war, the Kimberley Process (KP) suspended the CAR’s ability to legally export rough diamonds to prevent the entry of conflict or 'blood' diamonds into the global market. Gold, however, was not similarly declared a conflict mineral; mining continued throughout the war and is ongoing. Eight subprefectures in the western CAR have since been reopened for diamond mining under KP oversight.

Today, the CAR government’s tenuous hold on state control is supported by a UN stabilizing mission (MINUSCA), Rwandan ‘protection forces’, and Russian private military contractors. The export of rough diamonds is carefully monitored by the KP: controls include the ‘footprinting’ of every export parcel, paper trail and statistical review, and remote sensing analyses of satellite imagery to verify origin. This paper will discuss the USGS’s contribution to these efforts at pre- and post-shipment verification, including determinations of production capacity, confirmation of mining activity, and conflict mapping to assess security in approved and proposed subprefectures.