Consumers as well as regulators are increasingly interested in where jewelers’ gems and other materials come from, according to panelists at a seminar on “Trust, Traceability, Transparency” that took place July 15 during the Initiatives in Art and Culture’s 15th annual Gold and Diamond Conference in New York City.
“When you’re claiming that a product is from a certain place, you can’t lie about it,” said Sara Yood, president and CEO of the Jewelers Vigilance Committee. “And if you don’t know where that’s from, that’s problematic. One of the reason traceability systems can be useful is to provide that backup information.”
Yood noted that diamond importers must comply with U.S. sanctions on Russian diamonds one-half carat and larger.
“You have to provide a self-declaration statement stating your goods are not Russian origin,” she said. “That statement needs to be backed up with some kind of evidence. You do not yet need to submit that evidence to Customs, but they may come asking for it. They may hold up your shipment and ask you for that information.”
Jennifer Moriconi, chief sales officer for iTraceiT, a Belgium-based traceability system, said the European Union (EU) is moving ahead with its plan to require all diamond imports to be tracked digitally by Jan. 1, 2026. However, the EU may allow companies to use their own systems, as long as they are audited, she said.
Yood said it’s not yet clear if the United States will join the EU in ratcheting up sanctions.
“The folks that have been appointed into these [decision-making roles] still have not yet been confirmed by the Senate,” she said. “So there’s a bit of a holding pattern at the State Department in terms of what they’re going to do.
“If we’re thinking a little bit wider geopolitically, you see that the U.S. policy to Russia keeps shifting. You may think that it’s pro-Russia, and then all of a sudden they say, ‘Oh, just kidding. We’re going to send a bunch of weapons to Ukraine.’
“However, I don’t think we’re going to go backwards in terms of Russian diamond sanctions,” said Yood. “One thing I’ve learned over the years is that it’s really difficult to unwind a sanctions program. It takes years, not months, to undo that kind of work. So I think we’re going to have these sanctions for a while.”
Brad Brooks-Rubin, a lawyer with the firm Arktouros who has worked in government and at industry groups, said that while Russian diamonds are an immediate concern, other jewelry products may appear on the government’s radar.
“It’s not hard to imagine that, at some point or another, someone in power in the White House is going to say, ‘We need to stop all products coming from X country,’” he said. “That’s now happening through tariffs. At some point there might be a more direct import restriction—whether it’s on China, whether it’s on South Africa or other places that have been in the administration’s crosshairs lately.
“If, God forbid, another a terrorist attack happens and it comes from a place where that involves diamonds, it’s not hard to imagine those decisions being made very quickly.”
Brooks-Rubin noted that Customs presumes certain items, such as Chinese-produced solar panels, are manufactured by forced labor.
“Importers have to prove that they’re not [made with forced labor] in order to get their goods out,” he said. “There are several billions of dollars of products that are sitting with Customs because someone couldn’t make that [case]. There is now a gold mine in China and we can’t expect that won’t eventually happen with jewelry too.”
The panelists considered the question of whether customers are interested in origin information more complicated, as consumers can’t be viewed as a monolith.
“Asking what consumers want is as elusive as what Americans want,” Brooks-Rubin said. “Every time you ask what Americans want, you’ll get 100 different answers.
“When I was in government and we were asking this question [about origin] in 2010, we had an array of diamond industry leaders who said consumers don’t care. If that was true, we wouldn’t still be having this conversation. Not all consumers care about the same thing, but all consumers care about something. And to the extent that there is a group of consumers who care about this, it matters.”
Kat Weymouth, director of diamond and jewelry services for SCS Global Services, said her company certifies products in a variety of industries and has seen customers become interested in the origins of fish and organic products.
“Consumers understand what they mean for those products, because we have taught them what they mean,” she said. “And so as the [jewelry] industry evolves and we have more of these conversations, the consumer will understand there’s a choice, and they’re allowed to make that choice, and they don’t have to assume that their product has traceability and a responsible supply chain behind it. I often feel that consumers don’t know they have a choice.”
David Block, CEO of Sarine Technologies, which offers a traceability system, said retailers have repeatedly told him that consumers rarely bring the subject up.
“So I ask, ‘Why are you [interested]?’” he said. “The high-end retailers say their consumers expect them to understand their supply chain and that they’re working with a responsible supply chain. So it’s not a matter of what the consumer is actually walking into the store and asking, but what they’re expecting from the brand that they’re buying from.”
Moriconi added that brands are by their nature risk-averse.
“They don’t want to harm their marketing investments by an NGO saying, ‘You have [a bad product] in your value chain,’” she said. “So for them, it’s a strategic move to be able to trace [their products].”
When asked whether traceability systems would include the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector, the panel admitted that was a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
“We’ve seen great advancements in the technology for traceability that I think is implementable at an ASM level with QR codes on their phones and tamper-proof packaging,” said Weymouth.
Moriconi said she’s seen small farmers participate in traceability initiatives in the chocolate industry.
“There, we had artisanal farmers whose product could be traced all the way through to a chocolate bar,” she said. “So it is feasible. You need to start by thinking about it.… Cooperation and development has to play a part in some way at the starting point.”
Added Block: “We need to be careful of not doing anything because we cannot cover 100% of the value chain. We need to find a balance between creating transparency and finding solutions that are as inclusive as possible.”
The panel was moderated by the author of this article.
Top, from left: Rob Bates, Brad Brooks-Rubin, David Block (on screen), Jennifer Moriconi, Kat Weymouth, and Sara Yood (photo by Cristina Villegas)