The title refers to blood diamonds , which are diamonds mined in war zones and sold to finance conflicts, and thereby profit warlords and diamond companies around the world. Set during the Sierra Leone Civil War of β, the film depicts a country torn apart by the struggle between government loyalists and insurgent forces.
It also portrays many of the atrocities of that war, including the rebels' amputation of civilians' hands to discourage them from voting in upcoming elections. The film's ending, in which a conference is held concerning blood diamonds, refers to a historic meeting that took place in Kimberley , South Africa , in It led to development of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme , which sought to certify the origin of rough diamonds in order to curb the trade in conflict diamonds; the certification scheme has since been mostly abandoned as ineffective.
The film received positive reviews, with praise directed toward the performances of DiCaprio and Hounsou. In , Sierra Leone is ravaged by civil war.
The Revolutionary United Front terrorizes the countryside and enslaves many locals to harvest diamonds , which fund their increasingly successful war effort. Solomon Vandy, a Mende fisherman from Shenge , is separated from his family and assigned to a workforce overseen by Captain Poison, a ruthless warlord.
While mining a river , Vandy discovers an enormous pink diamond. Captain Poison tries to take the stone, but the area is suddenly raided by government troops. Vandy buries the stone before being captured. Vandy and Poison are incarcerated in Freetown along with Danny Archer, a white Rhodesian gunrunner and Border War veteran jailed for trying to smuggle diamonds into Liberia.
