An Ethical Analysis on Blood Diamond PDF

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An Ethical Analysis on Blood Diamond Jessica Annabella 楊文秀 408685179

The movie ‘Blood Diamond’ is based on a real-life conflict happening around Africa, where diamonds are illegally mined in order to finance political wars and profiting warlords and diamond companies. The term ‘blood diamond’ itself is also coined due to the fact that in order to get these diamonds, a lot of blood and lives are shed; therefore, it hoped to bring out the negative consequences of diamond trade, and for consumers to be more aware of the source of their diamonds. The background that this movie sets in is the civil war in the Western African state of Sierra Leonne between 1996 and 2001. The country was devastated by the harsh warfare; in particular, the government and rebel forces that fight in a horrific battle that killed a lot of their people. As the war progresses, the director portrays diamonds as a cause of violence, with the rebels and the government competing for diamonds in order to support their respective armies. Diamonds were smuggled from as far as Liberia.

Plot Summary The film starts with an attack on Solomon's village by the RUF. Children with AK-47s are among the rebel soldiers shooting towards the mob of fleeing residents. The RUF was known for abducting children from their homes and training them as murderers. The RUF waged a vicious battle with the help of an estimated 10,000 child soldiers. Solomon is kidnapped and forced to work at a diamond mine run by the RUF. His elementaryschool-aged kid is captured shortly after. Later, he is seen at an RUF camp, where he is taught to forget about his family, vow entire devotion to the RUF, shoot guns, and murder without shame alongside a bunch of youngsters his age. Sometime later, Solomon discovers a huge and precious pink diamond at the mine and hides it for security. The rebels are then killed in a brutal air attack by the Sierra Leone army, and the

survivors, including Solomon, are detained and sent to a jail in the capital. Danny Archer winds up in the same jail as Solomon after a diamond smuggling scheme goes bad, and he learns about Solomon's pink diamond. He arranges Solomon's release, in the hopes of obtaining the diamond, in exchange for Solomon's assistance in locating his family. Archer then hunts down Maddy Bowen, an American journalist interested in reporting on blood diamonds, and offers her devastating information about the world's largest diamond firm in exchange for her assistance in finding Solomon's family. Archer ultimately sides with Solomon against his terrible boss after a lot of dramatic and violent twists and turns, Solomon is reunited with his family, including his son, and Maddy gets her story. She and Solomon fly to South Africa for the Kimberley Conference, where leaders from major diamond trading and producing countries have assembled to propose solutions to the scourge of blood diamonds and Solomon gave his testimony. This was an actual conference that took place in May of 2000 and resulted in the implementation of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme in 2003. Conflict-free diamonds with a Kimberley Process Certificate are guaranteed that there are no blood shed in the mining of said diamonds.

Blood Diamond and the Stakeholder Theory

Figure 1: The Stakeholder Theory Model

In the movie, there are a lot of stakeholders that come into play in the diamond industry. Sourcing from figure 1, focused centrally on the diamond company, there are suppliers of the diamond, the locals who are enslaved to harvest diamonds. Next is the community that is impacted by the trade of blood diamonds- the children that are forced to be in RUF and the people such as Vandy, who was living an honest life but are forced to extract diamonds. The secondary stakeholders include a special interest group, although in the movie, there is only an individual; Maddy Bowen, the American journalist who takes an interest in the unethical origins of diamonds in the industry. Additionally, there are also the competitors who also wanted the diamonds for their own gains, such as the RUF and the private military company led by Colonel Coetzee. According to stakeholdertheory.org, the stakeholder theory is “a view of capitalism that stresses the interconnected relationships between a business and its customers, suppliers, employees, investors, communities and others who have a stake in the organization. The theory argues that a firm should create value for all stakeholders,” Looking in the perspective of a diamond company, one of the most ethically-questioned stakeholders are its suppliers. The question remained, “Is the diamond conflict-free?”. In Sierra Leone 1999, the diamonds are traded to finance the use of weapons by the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) -a rebel group fighting its own government- and their buyers are big diamond companies who uses cleansing methods around the world to ‘wash’ all of its unethical origins. This is very much illustrated by a scene in the movie when Danny Archer was talking to an American journalist, “In America it’s bling bling, but out here it’s bling bang”. However, this also shows that there are other stakeholder groups that is held liable for this issuethe consumers. Most often than not, consumers are ignorant in concerning of the source of their diamonds. All they care about is, like Danny Archer quoted, the “bling-bling”. Even if they are concerned about its origins, most diamond company has ‘washed’ away the origins of the diamond itself. As this movie shows us, this proved that the diamond industry is highly corrupt, yet nevertheless, powerful.

Analysis There are a lot of ethically-questioned doings shown in the movie, such as bribery, when they smuggled the pink diamond across the border and lying, when Danny Archer pretended he is a journalist with a cameraman to get on the bus. The most prominent one is that there is a conflict of interest shown in two ways. The first is that they are controlling the supply of diamonds to bump out the price of diamonds. The second is when there are a lot of parties wanted their own stake at the pink diamond; Archer wanted it to get out of Africa, Colonel Coetzee wanted it as a compensation for Archer’s failed smuggling mission, while Vandy wanted it to reunite with his family. However, the topic that should be highlighted the most from this movie is that how children’s blood is involved surrounding the diamond industry. As seen in the film, a lot of the child soldiers are from an act of kidnapping. A warzone, in all senses, is not a healthy environment for a child to grow up with, especially when their cognitive side is not fully developed yet and have little to no sense of what is right or wrong. A child soldier is simply a violation of human rightsthe right to life, to education, to not be subjected to any forms of torture and the freedom of their own thoughts and conscience.

Conclusion Blood Diamond is a film that chronicles the civil conflict in Sierra Leone in 1999. The filmmaker creates the story in line with the real-life events that occurred in the country via better writing and characterization. The video portrays illegal diamond trafficking, greed, and corruption as the primary drivers of the region's brutal battle. The audience may miss the point of an epic story and instead focus on the atrocities committed in the country as a result of the "blood diamonds." Nonetheless, as a kind of social action, the director has broadened the scope of his films to include human horrors and conflicts. As a result, the film depicts an accurate account of the events that precipitated and fueled Sierra Leone's civil war....