The Kimberley Process is "highly vigilant" in seeing that diamonds do not provide funding for any group in the Ivory Coast, the only diamonds currently recognized as conflict or "blood" diamonds, KP Chair Boaz Hirsch has told AFP.

In 2002, the country descended into bloody civil conflict when rebels took up arms against Laurent Gbagbo – a rebellion some groups report was funded by the illegal diamond trade.

Political tension is once again running high since Alassane Ouattara defeated Gbagbo in November's presidential election, only to have Gbagbo refuse to concede. The international community is concerned that the disputed election – in which the UN declared Ouattara the winner – will spark renewed civil conflict.

Diamond trading in stones from the Ivory Coast has been under an international embargo since 2005, but the countries bordering the Ivory Coast (Burkina Faso, Guinea, Liberia, and Mali) are reportedly "unable or unwilling" to enforce the embargo on Ivorian diamonds. As a result, watchdog groups say, anywhere from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of rough diamonds have been smuggled out of the country in recent years.

According to Hirsch, the KP's efforts to stem the trade in the country's conflict diamonds involves working with the border nations and with geologists to establish a "geological footprint" of diamonds mined in West Africa that will allow the diamond industry to differentiate between legitimate stones and Ivorian conflict diamonds.