Set in 1999 Sierra Leone, Blood Diamond is a movie of adventure, pain, and hurt. The film chronicles the story of a mercenary, a man who seeks diamonds to sell illegally to foreign investors and a fisherman, whose family is stolen by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel army and whose only hope of survival and reunion is finding the diamond he discovered in the mines. Danny Archer, the white man from Rhodesia, manages to free Solomon Vandy from the prison where they are both imprisoned and promises to restore his family to him in exchange for the diamond. Maddy Bowen, a journalist who Danny meets, takes the two on a UN helicopter and they find Solomon’s family in a UN refugee camp in Guinea. They discover, however, that Solomon’s son, Dia, has been kidnapped by the RUF and forced to become a child soldier. The two travel to the place where Solomon left the diamond, only to find his son working at the same diamond mine. A scuffle ensues the following day and Dia is reunited with his father. Danny, who has been shot in the conflict, sends Solomon and Dia to London on his plane and dies alone on a mountainside in Sierra Leone. Maddy aids Solomon in receiving payment for his diamond and being reunited with his family before she exposes the scandals involved in acquiring illegal diamonds. As a result, “The Kimberley Process” is signed by 40 countries in 2003. This document agreed that these countries would make illicit diamond trade illegal in their country.
The civil war in Sierra Leone was fought between the government troops and the rebel soldiers associated with the RUF. These soldiers used guerilla warfare to enter villages, rape women, murder the villagers, and burn them to the ground. The children from these villages were brainwashed and forced to become child soldiers. The men were often shipped to the diamond mines and forced to excavate the diamonds sold illegally by the RUF to purchase weapons to continue the war. The government soldiers in Sierra Leone were just as brutal in their warfare. The conflict between the two forces resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Millions of people were displaced from their homes and forced into UN refugee camps with little more than the clothing on their backs. These people lost their homes and their livelihoods. Fortunately, the civil war in Sierra Leone ended in 2002.

However, there are still 200,000 child soldiers in Africa. Just as the western world refused to acknowledge the war in Sierra Leone and Liberia, they currently are ignoring the crisis in the Sudan. Films such as Invisible Children have exposed the tragedy and terror of the children in Africa who hide from the rebel forces attempting to capture them and force them into service. Americans may hide behind their homes and careers, believing they can send a check every year to feel better about what they have done, but in reality they continually support these wars, and the funding behind them, with the purchases they make each and every day.