This article talks about children and the obstacles they face concerning access to quality education. This one focuses in on child labor, which frequently drives kids out of school and away from educational opportunities. It focuses particularly on chocolate production and child labor as injustices. Again focusing on how our irresponsible consumerism promotes and even breeds injustice for others, especially concerning young people’s access to education and again how our consumerism drives/pulls kids out of educational opportunities
A call to be conscious consumers is one of the areas where U.S. believers have definitely lagged behind! It truly does matter what you buy & whom you buy it from. Our faith has to be a factor in how & where we spend our money because as this article goes to show, when done without caution, our money goes on to finance & undergird injustice globally, which ultimately limits the life chances of populations of poor people throughout the world. While some places are hit harder than others, i.e. parts of Africa, India, and Mexico, this is a global problem, a human problem. One that the Church has to gain the courage to raise up to address & confront!!!
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01.03.12 at 5:27 pm
It’s a “both and” situation. The consumer needs to demand better from their government and their companies.
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01.04.12 at 1:06 am
We cannot wait until the government takes the lead in bettering the situation, for if we are not conscious consumers we are also part of the problem and will have to answer to God for it as well. As Christians, I believe, we should be the example that shames the government and the elite who both are so far away from the problem that such injustice does not disturb them enough to begin to see these children as individuals and not dollar signs.
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01.04.12 at 10:56 am
I agree with both of you. This is similar to the issues with diamonds & electronic-related minerals that we’ve heard about in recent years. However, I find it interesting that this article is about 9 years old and it’s the first I’ve heard about the chocolate industry. I’ll have to do some web surfing to see if they met their goal in 2005.
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01.04.12 at 11:33 am
Considering that this article was published in 2002 it would be interesting to see what progress has been made now, in 2012, ten years later. We cannot sit patiently, taking a back-door to policies and awaiting governmental reinforcement. This is a reminder of the various ways children are mistreated because they are used by greed. Honestly, the abuse the children suffer over chocolate (or any other commodity) is ridiculous. This is definitely a world-wide issue. As consumers we must be aware of our voice and power by spreading this type of awareness so we can show support to the right areas.
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01.05.12 at 12:49 am
“At the centre in Mali, Save the Children Fund says, if the will was there, the problem could be fixed within a month.”
This sentence, taken from the end of the story, unfortunately, says it all. Evil and exploitation does and always will exist because “good” men and “good” women are willing to look the other way, support oppressive systems and industries with their patronage, and refuse to challenge wrong doing because of a fear of what it will personally cost them. This story reminds me of a monumental depiction of heinous terror and exploitation I read recently, King Leopold’s Ghost, which chronicles Europe and Belgium’s rape of the African continent and the enslavement of black people all for the production of rubber and ivory. Though too late to save the millions of slaves stolen from the Congo, at least E.D. Morel risked his reputation and his family to expose the barbarism and man’s inhumanity to man. More of us should be willing to honor the teachings of Christ by doing the same.
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01.05.12 at 1:31 pm
If the problem can truly be solved in a month’s time then justice advocates should do the grunt work of connecting the necessary partners to make it happen. Our voices should be heard from the consumer end to those producers who have yet to move from their promised deadline to a reality that releases these children from bondage. If we are truly burdened by the plight of the poor and the innocent in our world, an urgent response would be the only acceptable demonstration of God’s concern for those who are being oppressed to produce a product for our enjoyment. Justice work involves action on behalf of victims who are unable to plead their case on their own. Where is the outcry? What will it take to penetrate our consciousness? Who will go on behalf of the innocent ones?
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01.05.12 at 3:36 pm
So, I think one of the reasons that seems to get left out in the discussion a bit is what the farmers, who are taking part in the slavery and trafficking, get paid. According to another article released by the BBC about two years before the present article, multinationals would need to pay the farmers about 10 times the current market rate for cocoa (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1311982.stm).
While the current article asks the question how can “one human being treat another in the way they treated [the children]”, the answer, according to the farmer, seems to be clear: “The people who employ me left me with very little alternative” (my take, not their words). While child trafficking and slavery are SERIOUS problems, there are also problems of wages, labor controls, multinational and customer’s willingness to pay for cocoa products, etc.
I think there is much that can be done at the political level, nationally and locally in the Ivory Coast, even to the extent of cleaning up the industry in Ivory Coast in one month (which is probably a little too optimistic). However, this is only part of the equation. Multinationals must be willing to pay their suppliers a fare and livable wage, one that does not require that they resort to child trafficking and slavery. This of course severely reduces their profit margins and their bottom line. And while it’s easy to encourage customers to vote with their dollars and purchase fair trade cocoa, like diamonds (as noted above), when cocoa from Ivory Coast is mixed with other cocoa (a strategy by the powers that be to cover their tracks, no doubt), the cocoa becomes untraceable, almost rendering the fair trade cocoa to be a moot point (though not completely).
As hard as political leaders need to work to end it, I think the impetus lies more in the business community to improve their policies, practices and payments towards farmers, who do the work in a day that would cause anyone in a suit to keel over.
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01.05.12 at 11:40 pm
Yes, I agree with an earlier comment that it would be interesting to investigate what progress has been made in the chocolate industry regarding child labor since this article was published back in 2002. It takes time and intentionality to investigate where our goods come from and whether the process of getting them into our hands involved such injustice as child labor. We as a society need to be not only aware of these injustices, but we must not stand for them to continue. We cannot go on with out daily lives and claim that we “did not know” about the harsh treatment of our fellow human beings. We know! This knowledge must be translated into action, and we must be wiling to sacrifice our own desires in order to see justice reign.
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01.11.12 at 5:55 pm