The Security Council on Wednesday lifted all remaining U.N. sanctions against Sierra Leone, eight years after it emerged from an 11-year civil war that was at the center of the so-called "blood diamond" trade. The arms embargo and travel bans for rebels have been in place since 1997. More than 50,000 people were killed and many more mutilated during the former British colony's 1991-2002 civil war. Britain's U.N. ambassador, Mark Lyall Grant, welcomed the lifting of the sanctions, which London has been pushing for. "The situation in Sierra Leone continues to improve and the lifting of sanctions is another indicator of that positive trend," Reuters quoted Grant as saying in a statement. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said the council's moves "are important milestones in Sierra Leone's long recovery." "Because of the much-improved situation in Sierra Leone, including the work of its special courts and the demobilization of armed groups, the remaining sanctions can now be lifted," she said in a statement. The civil war helped draw international attention to "blood diamonds" -- diamonds used by rebels to fund insurgencies. In July 2000, the council banned the import of all rough diamonds from Sierra Leone and ordered the government to launch a program of certifying the origin of its diamonds. The West African country's rebels relied on gems, which they smuggled into neighboring Liberia in exchange for arms. The crackdown on Sierra Leone's diamonds eventually led to the creation of the so-called Kimberley Process, a U.N.-backed system for certifying the origin of rough diamonds. According to the Reuters AlertNet website (www.alertnet.org), the Kimberley Process is credited with a sharp decline in "blood diamond" trade. Sierra Leone is hoping to develop its agriculture, mining and tourism sectors. Crude oil was discovered off the coast in September 2009, intriguing investors who have high hopes for a new multibillion-barrel oil frontier. But the country sits in an unstable region and is struggling to control corruption in the wake of its civil war. Sierra Leone is near the bottom of the United Nations' Human Development Index -- a benchmark of life expectancy, literacy and education levels.
