Corporations, Forced Labor, and Fair Trade

"You can't hold a man down without staying down with him."

 Booker T. Washington 

 In the world, there are an estimated 29.8 million people enslaved. That is approximately 600,000 more people than the populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Austin, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, San Francisco, and Columbus (Americas fifteen largest cities) put together (29,207,368 total). 29.8 million is about two million less than the population of the world’s two largest cities, Shanghai and Istanbul (31,690,873 total), put together. 29.8 million is approximately .4 percent of the world’s population, about one half of one percent. Regardless of how this number is presented, we are in agreement, it is too large. What contributes to an enslavement equal to 9.5 percent of the United States population? The simple answer is business. Slavery is profitable to many people. Slavery is profitable to the people who enslave and to the corporations that utilize this labor in their supply chain. While looking at corporations as a whole entity is tempting, it is also overwhelming. The amount of corporations that benefit from slave labor is immense and near innumerable. Instead, I will look at the facets of production that I believe encompass a fair amount of the forced labor being exploited and that certain corporations find most beneficial. Columbite- tantalite mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, cotton production in Uzbekistan, and tobacco farming in Kazakhstan. I would like to add a caveat: this, in no way, portrays all or even a large portion of forced labor, this is simply a list of three productions that are well documented and extremely profitable for those involved, for a more complete view of products that involve forced labor, check out this info-graphic.

What do Apple, Boeing, Intel, the Carlise Group, Compaq, Dell, IBM, Nokia, and Siemens have in common? They all profit from the exploitation and forced labor of children in the Democratic Republic of
Congo. Columbite- tantalite (commonly refereed to as coltan) is an ore from which tantalum is extracted. Tantalum is used for electrical capacitors in almost all electronic devices, including all cell phones and personal computers. The Democratic Republic of Congo posses about 64%. It is mainly mined from areas in, and around, the Kahuzi Brega National Park, one of the most bio-diverse tropical forests on the planet. This causes wide spread deforestation. As a result of invasions by Rwanda and Uganda and a political campaign called Rally for Congolese Democracy, the DRC is now home to a number of political dissident splinter groups (including the RCD-Goma, RCD-Kisingani, and the Congolese Liberation Front) that run the mining and processing of coltan. The price has recently gone as high as 500$ per pound. The ore is highly toxic and difficult to mine. Children are used because, "Children are essential to the process because they can get into smaller holes dug into river beds." About 5000-6000 children are currently enslaved mining Coltan in the DRC. Nearly every electronics manufacturer uses and benefits from this process.

         






What do H&M, Victoria's Secret, Nike, Marks & Spencer, Ikea, and Adidas have in common? They all profit from the exploitation and forced labor of children and adults in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan is the 6th largest producer and the 2nd largest exporter of cotton in the world. Cotton is Uzbekistan's main cash crop, earning the nickname "white gold". In Uzbekistan the cotton production is controlled by the government. Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan since 1989 (just after the fall of the Soviet Union), forcibly mobilizes one million children and adults every year. These people are forced to work and the only people profiting from the production are the Karimov government. This system of slavery is unique. It is completely controlled by the government. The cotton farmers are forced to meet state imposed quotas and children are regularly taken out of school to help plant and harvest cotton. This cotton is bought by clothing manufacturers around the world (some uses the fair trade labeling) to produce textiles. "The Karimov administration detains, tortures, and exiles, Uzbek citizens who call for recognition of human rights, violating their human rights and denying freedoms of speech and the press."    

This segment will only target one corporation- The Altria Group. The Altria Group, formerly known as Philip Morris Companies Inc., produces about 800 billion cigarettes a year. This results in yearly revenues of approximately 75 billion dollars. Altria makes a large portion of this profit by utilizing slave labor in Kazakhstan to purchase the tobacco it uses for cigarettes sold only in the former soviet republics. Kazakhstan officially prohibits any person under the age of 18 from working on farms. The work is intensive and dangerous (due to high levels of nicotine and pesticides). Many children work with their families for eight or nine months a year, expecting one lump sum payment at the end. This payment model makes exploitation particularly easy. There are between 300,000 and 1,000,000 migrant laborers working on tobacco farms in Kazakhstan throughout the year. The amount of those workers enslaved is relatively small but it is important to realize how dangerous this work is for children. "Experts consider tobacco farming one of the worst forms of child labor, meaning children under the age of 18 should not be working in it." Philip Morris Kazakhstan has done little, almost nothing, to try and prevent abuses.

This should give an appropriate introduction to the topics I will be discussing in class tomorrow. I don't want to present my argument but it regards the benefits and deficits of fair trade and whether or not the individual consumer can make an impact with their purchases. I ask everyone to consider what they're wearing, what they're typing on, and what they're (possibly) smoking.   

       

Is Sensationalism Really Sensational?

In a world that is obsessed with sending and receiving stimulating information at an increasingly swift pace, it is nearly impossible to accurately convey the severity of issue, especially one like modern slavery and what should be done to end it, through media. This is due, in large part, to sensationalism brought on by the idea that one must follow a “status quo” when it comes to writing publications, screenplays, etc.

According to reporter Imam Abdullah Antepli, people on a global level are more interested in reading about the “he said, then she said” of an argument or watching the blood and gore of a movie or news report than the actual issue at hand. Such was true after the winner of this past year’s Miss America Pageant was announced, and in movies such as Blood Diamond and Taken. Writers who, knowingly or not, alter facts in an attempt to write the best story or achieve the most sales are misleading people. As Antepli put it,

“If all you hear, read and see about an entire nation, religion, people and society are the marginal, disturbing elements of them in the spirit of sensationalism,you inevitably develop inaccurate and misleading images and information about the people around you.”

Obviously not every quote or morsel of information a writer uncovers while researching a topic can be included in a screenplay or published in a newspaper or magazine; each paper submitted would swell to the thickness of a dictionary if that were the case. Yet, in this era that seeks to transmit, faster than light, only the most interesting news, critical and relevant information is beginning to slip through the cracks. In a “How To” website concerning the proper construction of a news article, writers are encouraged to compile enormous amounts of information during the research process and then sift through the stack, picking and choosing the “best” quotations and tidbits, to put together the most interesting report possible. Yes, reporters must check and recheck information when writing an article, especially when a person is being quoted. However, just because the facts of an article are correct, does not necessarily mean that they are being properly represented.

So how is sensationalism around the world ended? Should new ordinances be put into place on a governmental level to ensure that all facts and quotations are accurately represented? What can be done to make audiences more receptive to understanding and compelled to take a stand against the issues presented by the media?

Fair Trade Chocolate: Is Worth Buying?

During this Halloween season, we can see shelves stocked with different types of candy, especially chocolate. Chocolate is one of the most consumed products in the world. 3 million tons of it are consumed every year. Unfortunately many of the big name brands, such as Nestle and Mars, are buying cocoa beans from cocoa plantations that use child labor mainly in the countries of the Ivory Coast and Ghana in Africa. According to the 10 Campaign, an estimated 1.8 million children are working in these cocoa plantations. As part of their job, they are required to carry heavy loads and work with dangerous tools such as machetes. The documentary the Dark Side of Chocolate directed by Miki Mistrati provides actual footage of children being trafficked and working in these plantations. In Kevin Bales' Ending Slavery, there is a section about the poor conditions of these slaves and stories of children that successfully escaped. Pictures of young boys with scars on their backs from the beatings of their plantation owners show that these children are being treated as slaves. Chocolate companies take no responsibility for the working conditions in these plantations. When Mistrati wrote to these companies about the use of child slaves to harvest their cocoa they responded with the statement "The vast majority of cocoa farms are not owned by the companies that make chocolate or supply cocoa and claim that they don't have control over the cocoa farms and labor practices."

A solution to this problem? Many anti-Child Labor/Human Trafficking advocacy groups suggest buying fair trade. But is this really buying? Is it going to help the problem of trafficking African children to the Ivory Coast and Uganda to work for little to no pay in cocoa plantations? Though this may seem like a reasonable solution, it is not a major help to that cause. It rather helps out those who are working in plantations that are being treated fairly and paid well. That's why it is called fair trade, because the chocolate company is buying cocoa from cocoa plantations that have proven to the company that they pay their workers and treat them well, or that the company owns their own plantations and regulates them well with good pay and fair labor.

So what can we do to make sure that fair trade cocoa is being bought by the big chocolate companies? Kevin Bales, in response to Fair Trade Chocolate in a CNN interview said buying fair trade is good, better than buying from big name brands. We, instead, need to pressure the chocolate industry to buy cocoa from plantations with fair labor. "While it is important to continue to pressure the chocolate industry to keep their supply chains free of slavery, there are other cocoa-using industries like cosmetics and food manufacturers, that have not taken part in dealing with the problem in their source material." So chocolate isn't the only issue at hand, but it is still a pretty big one and the slavery is still occurring today. 

So the next time you pick up a candy bar, do your research and see if that company is buying fair trade cocoa. If they don't know, it isn't fair trade. Urge them and your friends to notify these companies that they will not buy their products anymore until they have proven that their cocoa is made with fair labor and in the meantime--buy fair trade. 

Brothels: Are they truly safer?

     Brothels are a constant topic of conversation. Well, of arguments really. Brothels can be a place where women can sell sex safely. But are they really that safe considering what the women still have to do? Some people argue that brothels would be a much safer option for sex workers. But the person who runs the brothel can easily abuse their power and traffick the women and take all of the money they earned.
   
    Joyce Glaspy of St. Louis, Missouri said that brothels would give the women security and safety. She also said, "These are human beings, and you can do something to help them." She brought this point up in a ward meeting and was upset because no one took her seriously. They brushed off this important claim as if it meant nothing because no one wants to face or admit that there is a huge problem of prostitution and/or trafficking going on in their city.

     But there are two sides to every story. Brothels can also be used to further exploit these women. In chapter three of Survivors of Slavery by Laura Murphy,  the reader learns that Lena, a forced sex worker, has never seen her money, was threatened when she told her pimp she wanted it, and can only buy necessities like toiletries through her pimp. This idea of a brothel displays how dangerous it can still be for a sex worker. Brothel or not, it is not always the safest place as many people like to argue.

      A new documentary about a brothel in New Orleans, Louisiana recently appeared on Netflix. It is called the Canal Street Madam and tells the story about Jeanette Maier and her family run brothel. Jeanette and her mother were the bosses while Jeanette employed her own daughter as an escort. Jeanette claims her girls were very safe in her brothel and that she took very good care of them. She did not exploit them or traffick them but she still hounded them for money and and sold them over the phone to clients. These women were their own people doing what they wanted and were under the impression that they were safe. Jeanette was their pimp who sold them and made profit off of them.

     Women who are sex workers are never safe. Not in a brothel, not in the streets, and not with a pimp. The music group Three 6 Mafia has a song titled, "Hard Out Here for a Pimp." That is one of the most backwards songs because it most certainly is not hard out in the world for a pimp. It is hard on the women they are selling and exploiting. There is no guaranteed safety anywhere for a woman as a sex worker. Who can they trust or turn to? They have no one but themselves at any and every bad situation. It is a dangerous world we live in and sex workers play a dangerous game that always teeters on the edge.

2014 World Cup: Does it Attract Human Trafficking

            The Fifa World Cup is the most highly attended sporting event in the world (3.18 million in South Africa) which makes the host country responsible for many aspects of the tourism involved.  One of the problems that arose when Qatar was being considered to host the World Cup was that they would have to build many stadiums to hold all of the games, but what should be most important is the safety of everyone involved.  A recurring theme has emerged since the Athens Olympics concerning

the influx of tourists attracting human traffickers, therefore an important question today is how will the 2014 World Cup in Brazil have an effect on the country's human trafficking situation.  Although it is debatable whether large sporting events affect the amount of human trafficking in an area, if the 2014 Fifa World Cup does affect human trafficking in Brazil it will be in exploited sex workers.

Although Brazil has one of the worst statistics for human trafficking, its major human trafficking industry will not be directly affected by the world cup.  According to Kevin Bales in his book Disposable People, Brazil's part in the slave trade is much darker than that of the United States, and that the abolishment of slavery in 1888 may have not affected the vast remote regions of Brazil where there was little enforcement; consequentially this has created an environment where slavery, or human trafficking can easily flourish.  Bales demonstrates that rapid economic growth in the 1960's and 1970's lead to a recession in the 1980's.  50,000 of 156,000,000 Brazilians own almost everything while 4,000,000 people own 3 percent of the land.  Kevin Bales has demonstrated that when poverty is extreme people are willing to take more extreme risks to make money in order to sufficiently live.  Bales research shows that Brazil's largest human trafficking business is charcoal manufacturing in places where deforestation is occurring.  However, the charcoal business will not be majorly affected by the influx of tourists.

            Sex trafficking is a form of human trafficking defined as: the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.  It is important to note that sex trafficking is a different than prostitution.  Prostitution or sex work is legal in Brazil as long as no third party benefits from it, or as long as the sex worker is 18 or older.  Because the sale of sex is legal in Brazil, the country is seen as a sex destination.  As a result, there is a large demand for sex workers.   The United Nations estimates that approximately 500,000 children are exploited in domestic prostitution in Brazil.  The law stating that children younger than 18 cannot be sex workers determines those 500,000 children to be victims of human trafficking.  Therefore, if the influx of people in Brazil creates an increased demand for sex workers in which the current supply cannot meet, then the Brazilian sex industry can increase its supply in two ways.  The first is by having consenting adults become sex workers without the threat of violence or coercion.  The second is by committing atrocities in forcing adults or children (even if they do consent to it) into the sex industry. 

            Forced labor is a major problem in Brazil, however, he only form of human trafficking that can be directly affected by the World Cup and the tourism it attracts is sex trafficking.  The questions then raised are: 1) does the tourism associated with sporting events create a larger demand in the sex industry 2) if the demand is greater because of sporting events does the Brazilian sex industry already have enough supply 3) if the current supply of sex workers in Brazil cannot meet the larger demand created by the World Cup will it lead to sex trafficking or an increase in legal sex workers?   
impacted by the World Cup is small.