Blood Diamond. How can you tell if your diamond is ethical?

He's proposed (or maybe she did) and you've accepted and both of you are determined to stage an ethical wedding. What a great start!

But you could stumble at the first hurdle - the ring. With the release of the new blockbuster Blood Diamond starring Leonardo di Caprio and set in war torn Sierra Leone in the nineties, talk of 'blood diamonds' has again come to the fore, so much so in fact that it makes your head spin! How can you be sure your diamond is conflict free and fairly traded?

The term 'blood', or 'conflict' diamond derives from that bloody civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990's where diamonds were used with great effect to fund the conflict, often being traded directly in exchange for arms to fuel the war.

In 1998 Global Witness began an international campaign to expose the role of diamonds in funding conflict and in 2003, the Kimberley Process was launched to stop the trade in conflict diamonds. Over seventy governments signed up to the process but it has never been fully implemented and rebel groups, diamond companies and traders exploit weak government controls along the supply chain, trading in blood daimonds with impunity, smuggling them through the legitimate markets of Ghana and Mali.

So diamonds are still fueling the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DMC), the bloodiest war since WWII, where armed violence and human rights abuses continue over the control of diamond mines in the eastern Congo. Massive Kimberley Process fraud has also been uncovered in Venezuela and Brazil.

Under the Kimberley Process code, jewellers should be able to provide certification to consumers proving that their gems are from conflict-free zones, but the whole process has no independent verification or enforcement systems.

There's also an emerging story that 90 percent of polishing is now carried out in India where some children are used for their small hands and nimble fingers.

And lets not forget the Bushmen of Gope. In their longstanding battle with the Botswana government (and the De Beers cartel) for the right to return and live on their ancestral lands, they have suffered tremendous misery, torture and loss of life through violence, alcholism and aids. Find out more from Survival International.

So what do you do now?

Well of course if you still want a diamond, you can have one! And it can still be a girl's best friend if you take just a few things into consideration when choosing your gem:

• If you want to be absolutely sure that your diamond is conflict free and fair trade then the only option is to buy a certified and branded (with a miniscule polar bear image) diamond that has been mined, cut and polished in Canada. But they are pricey.
• You could decide that diamond mining in Sierra Leone, which is now a peaceful nation rebuilding itself after terrible conflict, is about the only viable industry there and offers its people a real prospect of a better life. If you choose to take this stance, try and avoid any diamonds from the De Beers cartel and seek out Martin Rapaport's fair trade diamonds from his Sierra Leone mine. Find out what he has to say about the dilemmas of buying diamonds on his website diamonds.net.
• Ask your jeweller if he or she can guarantee that the diamond you are buying is conflict-free. If they're not interested in the issue then walk out the door and find one who is.
• Have an antique rock refashioned just for you by a creative jewellery designer/maker, or ask your family to donate the 'heirloom' to your very green union!

Search for jewellers with an ethical outlook in our partners pages.