Behind and history of blood diamonds Research Paper

Behind and history of blood diamonds - Research Paper Example The trade of blood diamonds has been the cause of 4 million deaths. In the 1990s, before relevant steps were taken to curb the problem, conflict diamond trade amounted to be between 3.7-20 percent of the total global diamond trade (â€Å"Blood Diamonds†). It was during the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999 that the UN began to approach the issue of blood diamond. The UN together with relevant NGOs began to create general awareness regarding blood diamonds among policy makers, media and public representatives to inform them about the gravity of the issue. The UN subsequently passed resolutions such as United Nations Security Council Resolution 1173  and  United Nations Security Council Resolution 1176 to ban the trade of illegal diamonds in Angola. However, these resolutions had little effect on prominent warlords. Trade of Blood Diamonds continued to occur in Angola. The UN then commissioned the Canadian ambassador, Robert Fowler to investigate the issue further. Fowler’s investigations resulted in the Fowler Report in 2000. This report helped form the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme. Under the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme, it is illegal to trade diamonds in any country where the diamonds are not in officially sealed packages. Furthermore, criminal charges are to be imposed to anyone caught trading in illegal diamonds. However, the biggest shortcoming of the Scheme is that it does not protect Blood Diamond trade from corrupt officials who are willing to officially stamp the diamonds for a certain fee. The definition of blood diamond is also limited in this process (Bates). It is argued that the Kimberley Process needs to be revised even as some claim that this process is a step in the right direction (Grant, 393). Others are completely against the process by claiming that the scheme only supports nations and businesses

The criminal mind Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

The criminal mind - Essay Example Three features distinguish crime science from criminology: it embraces the physical, computer and engineering sciences as well as the social; it focuses on crime rather than criminals, and it is single-minded about cutting crime, rather than studying it for its own sake. Crime science was conceived by the British broadcaster Nick Ross in the late 1990s in order to recruit scientific methods to crime prevention, with encouragement from the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir John Stevens and Professor Ken Pease. Situations have not been entirely ignored in criminology. Birkbeck3 and LaFree (1993) and Sampson and Lauritsen (1994) have reviewed various situational approaches to crime, deviance, and violence, including the work of symbolic integrationists, opportunity and routine activity theorists, and those who advocate the study of criminal events. Most empirical research on situations, however, has involved the event as the unit of analysis, with no link to individual histories or individual patterns of behavior. To study the behavior situation relations advocated by Mischel and Shoda (1995)4, we would need to study the same individuals across multiple situations or contexts. To proceed with such an approach, we must define situations. From the various situational perspectives on crime there has not as yet emerged a consensus as to how situations should be conceptualized. Let us turn back to the summer camp study (Shoda et al., 1994) for a possible model. In that study the researchers observed behavior occurring within different levels, which they referred to as ecological settings, nominal situations, and interpersonal situations. Table 1 provides examples of these different levels. The ecological settings represented are camp, school, and home. Within each ecological setting are nominal situations, which they describe as â€Å"dictated by the structure of the particular ecology (the setting)† (Shoda et al., 1994: 675). Thus, at