Two jewellers describe their work as ethical. One points to Australian sapphires, the other to certified gold, and both sound equally sure of themselves. From the word alone you have no way of telling whether either of them has said anything at all.

That is not because the trade is uniquely dishonest. It is that the word has no document of its own. Four published standards govern parts of what people mean by ethical jewellery in Australia, and every one of the four defines something considerably narrower than the word itself. Knowing which four, and where each one stops, is most of the test. Every definition and date below was checked on 12 October 2026.

We design and make engagement rings and fine jewellery in Surry Hills, and we specialise in Australian sapphires, so we have an obvious interest in you believing that some sourcing claims are worth more than others. There is a section below where we turn the same test on ourselves.

Four Documents Govern the Claim, and Not One of Them Says Ethical

Here are the four, and what each one governs. All of them are published and all of them can be read in full.

• The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme. The European Commission describes it as regulating the international trade in rough diamonds.
• The Responsible Jewellery Council Code of Practices. Its December 2024 standard sets its scope across all sectors of the gold, silver, platinum group metal, diamond and coloured gemstone jewellery and watch supply chain.
• Fairmined. Applies, on its own account, solely to artisanal and small-scale mining organisations, and covers gold, silver and platinum.
• The Fairtrade standard for gold and associated precious metals. Covers artisanal and small-scale mining organisations and the traders buying and selling their metal.

Read that list as a buyer rather than as a jeweller. Between them, the four govern rough diamonds in transit, the conduct of a business, and precious metal from mines of a particular size. The finished ring is not the unit any of them measures, and not one of the four uses the word you asked about.

The Kimberley Process Certifies Rough Diamonds, Not Rings

The European Commission, in its own account of the scheme, describes the Kimberley Process as regulating the international trade in rough diamonds, and cites United Nations Security Council resolution 1459 for the definition of what it was built to stop: rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments.

Read that definition slowly, because it does less than its reputation suggests. It names rough diamonds, not polished ones. It names rebel movements and their allies, not states. Conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments is the only conflict inside the sentence, which leaves mining conditions, wages, water, land rehabilitation and the conduct of a government towards its own citizens outside it. The scheme is not badly built. It is narrowly built, and the narrowness is written into the definition rather than hidden behind it.

The Australian end is equally specific. The Department of Finance, in its stocktake of Commonwealth regulators, describes the scheme as administered here by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, which issues Kimberley Process Certificates as export permits allowing rough diamonds to leave Australia. In both descriptions the thing being certified is a consignment of rough crossing a border. A jeweller who offers the Kimberley Process as the answer to a question about the stone in your ring has answered a different question.

Why Ethical Jewellery Claims Are Really Claims About Companies

The Responsible Jewellery Council's Code of Practices has the broadest reach of the four. The December 2024 version, approved by the council's board on 19 November 2024, sets its scope across all sectors of the gold, silver, platinum group metal, diamond and coloured gemstone jewellery and watch supply chain, and is explicit that the coloured gemstone supply chain here means rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Of the four documents, it is the only one whose scope reaches a sapphire at all.

Two things about it are worth keeping. The first is structural. The standard states that members are certified as a whole rather than facility by facility, and that a member's certification scope must take in every facility it owns or controls. The unit of certification is the business. Nothing in that arrangement produces a certificate for the ring on the bench.

The second is who issues it. The entities the council certifies are its members, and the standard they are certified against was approved by the council's own board. That is not grounds for dismissing it, and a published standard with an audit behind it is a great deal more useful than a warm sentence on an about page. It is grounds for reading the claim precisely. Certification under the Code of Practices is a statement about a company's governance, issued by a body that company belongs to.

Fairmined and Fairtrade run the other way. Both certify at the mine. Fairmined applies solely to artisanal and small-scale mining organisations, covers gold, silver and platinum, and operates in low and medium income countries qualifying for Official Development Assistance. Fairtrade International's revised standard for gold and associated precious metals, published on 25 June 2026 and applicable from 1 July 2027, covers artisanal and small-scale mining organisations and the traders buying and selling their metal. Both are precise about what they cover, and neither has anything to say about a coloured gemstone or about who sets it. The way two bodies can pull a single word in two directions is the same problem we worked through for metal in recycled versus newly mined gold.

What You Can Look Up Yourself, and Where It Runs Out

Two Australian sources are worth knowing about before the conversation starts.

The first is the Modern Slavery Statements Register, administered by the Attorney-General's Department, which publishes the annual statements of entities caught by the reporting requirement in the Modern Slavery Act 2018. That requirement applies to entities with annual consolidated revenue of at least $100 million. The statements are public and anyone can read them. A business below that figure is not required to have one there, which is not a mark against it. It means the public record you were hoping to check may not exist in their case, and the question has to be put in the room instead.

The second is the ACCC's guide for business on making environmental claims, published in December 2023. Its fifth principle is to avoid broad and unqualified claims, on the ground that broad or unqualified claims risk misleading consumers, and it names the kind of vague term it has in mind: green, eco-friendly, sustainable. The guide is also careful about its own edges, stating that it focuses specifically on environmental claims while noting that its principles could also apply to other types of ethical, social and governance claims. The regulator's own guidance on claim-making stops just short of the word itself. We make rings. We are not auditors or lawyers, and none of this is a compliance opinion.

Which brings it back to us. Our own sourcing claim is that we specialise in Australian sapphires. Test it the way you would test anyone's. Australian is a statement about geography rather than an audit, and the one document above whose scope reaches a sapphire certifies the business handling the stone, not the stone. What you can verify about our claim is the country, and that is all we are going to tell you it is worth. A sapphire report will not close the gap either, because it describes the stone rather than its history.

One further thing falls out of the list. None of the four reaches a stone that is already above ground and in circulation: one governs rough crossing a border, two govern mines, and the fourth governs companies. If origin is the part that matters most to you, an inherited, second-hand or recut stone stands outside every document in this article. It is not the answer that suits us, and it is the one answer here that depends on nobody's paperwork.

Where That Leaves You

The useful version of the question is not whether a jeweller's work is ethical. It is which document they are standing on, and what that document covers. The four in this article are all public, and between them they govern rough diamonds crossing borders, small mines and the conduct of companies. None of them governs the finished ring, and none of them uses the word.

That is a thinner answer than the marketing offers. It is also a workable one. You are no longer weighing a feeling against a feeling; you have four things to name, and a way of telling a specific claim from a general one.

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Laher is a bespoke jewellery studio in Surry Hills, Sydney. We design and handcraft engagement rings and fine jewellery using Australian sapphires and unique coloured diamonds.