CIBJO

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The CIBJO (Confédération Internationale de la Bijouterie, Joaillerie et Orfèvrerie), also known as the World Jewellery Confederation, is an international confederation of jewellery, gemstone, horology, and silverware trade organisations. Its primary purpose is as a decision-making body, to create and maintain standards and promote cooperation within these interconnected organisations; it seeks to cement nomenclature and set best practice guidelines to better engender consumer confidence. Originally a European confederation, the CIBJO was founded in 1926 under the name BIBOA. It later expanded to become the CIBJO in 1961, and now includes representatives of 36 countries; the CIBJO was renamed the World Jewellery Confederation in 2000, but still appears to retain its former name. It is headquartered in London, England and its current president is Gaetano Cavalieri.

The CIBJO's operations include the development of the Blue Book, a three-part publication outlining terminology, classification, and ethical guidelines (i.e., disclosure of treatments and synthetics) for coloured gemstones, diamonds, and pearls. Each part is coordinated by a separate commission. Similarly, the CIBJO Laboratory Commission (CLC), founded in the 1990s, seeks to harmonise standards used by gemmological laboratories—it has met limited success, but has the support of major laboratories such as those of the Gemological Institute of America and Gemmological Association of Great Britain. Among other functions, the CLC inspects and registers diamond master sets (sets of differently-tinted diamonds or cubic zirconia used for colour grading) and sets diamond grading policy for its member labs.

As of December 2004, the CLC is working with the Laboratory Manual Harmonisation Committee (LMHC; a committee of independent gemmologists) to develop a technical manual outlining the description of coloured stones and the disclosure of their treatments. Cooperation with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is also sought by the CIBJO. The guidelines published by the CIBJO have been used in several court rulings; in a recent (December 2004) example, a Munich district court ordered the German distributor of Gemesis Corporation—a producer of gem-quality synthetic diamond—to cease describing their product as "cultured", based on the Blue Book's guidelines on misleading terminology.

Policy is discussed and decided during the annual CIBJO Congress, a four-day conference of trade leaders held in a different city each year. The 2005 Congress was held in Hong Kong from March 4–March 7; the 2006 Congress is scheduled to be held in Vancouver, Canada.

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