Senior officials from the Chinese government and the United Nations will be at the Shanghai World Expo on September 21 and 22 to attend a workshop in Corporate Social Responsibility and sustainability at which the applications of these principles by the international jewellery industry will serve as the primary case study.

The event is being organised as part of UNITAR Week in the United Nations Pavilion at the World Expo by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), in cooperation with CIBJO, the World Jewellery Confederation. UNITAR Week will run from September 19 to 26, with the workshop taking place on September 21-22.

“This is a remarkable honour for the jewellery business, and demonstrates how the efforts of our industry in the areas of CSR and sustainability have been recognised by the international community,” said CIBJO President Gaetano Cavalieri. “The intention at this very high-profile event is that our experiences in the jewellery industry will serve as a positive example for other members of the business community, both in China and beyond.”

The first event on the morning of September 21 will be a forerunner session organised by CIBJO. Entitled “A 10-Year Journey,” it will provide an introduction to attendees in the UN Pavilion about the path travelled by the jewellery sector since 2000, when the conflict diamond crisis was at its height.

It will deal with the creation of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, CIBJO’s adoption of a proactive CSR and sustainability programme when it was accepted as the jewellery sector’s first and only member of the UN Economic and Social Council in 2006, and the creation by CIBJO in 2008 of the World Jewellery Confederation Education Foundation (WJCEF), to educate the jewellery industry about CSR and sustainability.

Facilitating the UNITAR Workshop will be the same team of CSR experts who designed the syllabus of the World Jewellery Confederation Education Foundation. Presenting papers and serving as panel members during the two-day will be a large number of prominent jewellery industry leaders and officials, among them Eli Izhakoff, president of the World Diamond Council; Jonathan Kendall, Global Operations Director for De Beers’ Forevermark programme; Mark Van Bockstael, International Affairs Manager at the Antwerp World Diamond Centre; and Georges Brys, CEO of HRD Antwerp, which is CIBJO’s senior partner at the event in Shanghai. Credit is given to AWDC by DiamondTopics.com