Dangerous Appetites: Human Rights Activism and Conflict Commodities

What do oil and diamonds have in common (aside from the fact that one can never have enough)? They are the world's favorite carbon-based treasures and they also have sustained ferocious civil wars in parts of Africa. Coinciding with growing academic and political recognition that natural resources can play important roles in causing and sustaining conflict, human rights activists launched two campaigns in the late 1990s calling for targeted sanctions against oil and diamonds from several conflict regions in Africa. The coalitions involved in these two separate efforts overlapped very little in goals, methods and participant organizations. But a comparison of the two campaigns sheds light on a number of shared challenges, illuminating lessons for future activism promoting sanctions against "conflict commodities."