Very Scary, Very Real

An Editorial from Green America: Keep Child Slavery out of the Cocoa Supply Chain

Sorry to scare you, but on Halloween, much of the chocolate Americans will hand out to trick-or-treaters will be tainted by the labor of enslaved children.

Hershey's, Nestlé, and the other big chocolate companies know this. They promised nearly a decade ago to set up a system to certify that no producers in their supply chains use child labor. They gave themselves a July 2005 deadline for that, which came and went without meaningful action. A second voluntary deadline sailed by as well in 2008. There's a new deadline for voluntary action at the end of this year. Don't hold your breath.

Few Americans had heard of this problem before reporters Sudarsan Raghavan and Sumana Chatterjee exposed the scandalous conditions under which most U.S. chocolate is made, in the summer of 2001.

In one of their articles, a slave described his 13-hour work-days on the 494-acre plantation as brutal, filled with harsh physical labor, punctuated by beatings, and ending with a night of fitful sleep on a wooden plank in a locked room with other slaves.

“The beatings were a part of my life,” said the boy, who was sold into slavery at not yet 12 years old. “Anytime they loaded you with bags and you fell while you were carrying them, nobody helped you. Instead, they beat you and beat you until you picked it up again.”

The reports shocked some members of Congress into action. That fall, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) prepared bills to require U.S. chocolate companies--by force of law--to certify their products as slave-free. Engel’s bill passed the House, but before Harkin’s bill could pass the Senate, the chocolate industry had announced a voluntary four-year plan to clean up its own supply chains, without legislation.

Meanwhile, evidence that child slavery still bedevils the chocolate industry isn’t hard to find. For example, in late September, a research team from Tulane University (specifically charged by Congress with oversight of the voluntary supply-chain efforts) reported that “the industry is still far from achieving its target by the end of 2010 … and the majority of children exposed to the worst forms of child labor remain unreached.”

The just-released documentary The Dark Side of Chocolate, by filmmakers Miki Mistrati and U. Roberto Romano takes a less detached tone, going undercover and exposing child slavery in the cocoa supply chain from the inside.

And if that’s not enough, the State Department’s own 2010 Trafficking in Persons report lists several West African countries where children are traded and taken to work cocoa plantations.

All the while, the biggest chocolate companies cavil that because they don’t own the cocoa plantations outright, cleaning up their supply chains is too hard. But some of them aren’t even trying. The biggest cocoa company in the country, Hershey’s--even after nine years to get started--has no certification system in place whatsoever to ensure that its cocoa isn’t tainted by labor rights abuses.

Here are three things you do this Halloween to ensure that your chocolate isn’t tainted by the exploitation of children overseas.

* You can look for chocolate from companies that do certify their supply chains, via labels such the Fair Trade label and the IMO Fair For Life label. Green America offers a scorecard explaining these labels in detail, and ranking the chocolate companies.
* You can contact conventional chocolate companies like Hershey’s – call them, write to them, write on their Facebook pages – and tell them you expect them to prove their supply chains aren’t tainted.
* You can contact your representatives in Congress. If after a decade the chocolate companies can’t monitor their own supply chains, we need to go back to the drawing board, and demand, by law, that slave-produced chocolate has no place on the shelves of stores in the USA.

The people who produce the raw materials for our chocolate treats deserve fair wages and safe working conditions. African children shouldn't have to suffer unspeakable horrors so that our children can have a happy Halloween

--Andrew Korfhage

Find our report on Hershey's cocoa sourcing here, and click here to send a message directly to the Hershey company.

It has happened!

It has happened! Despite the powerful neoliberal protestors, the United Nations has made an historic decision to recognize water as a fundamental and universal human right!

The resolution was brought to the U.N. general assembly several weeks ago from Bolivia, a country which has been fervently involved in issues of water rights for years. Countries like Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, which see water as a commodity rather than a human right, spoke out against the movement to no avail, as 144 nations voted last Wednesday that water should be viewed as a public trust, not a market commodity. There were 41 abstentions, and zero votes of "no." Abstaining was clearly the safer way to dissent for the opposers of this resolution, since voting against human rights is surely no historical record to boast.

Still, the outcome of this debate could not have been better! The right to safe drinking water and sanitation are now part of the guiding language for governments around the world, and we have all taken a huge step forward in the way we perceive and acknowledge human rights, particularly in regard to health and access to those resources which are a fundamental part of a healthful life. As Ms. Maude Barlow, water activist extrodinaire, put it last week on Democracy Now!: "[The resolution] is a moral statement, a guiding principle of the countries of the world, that they have taken a step in the direction of saying that water is a human right and a public trust, and that no one should be dying for a lack of water."

For more information about the vote, and to watch Ms. Barlow's full interview with Amy Goodman, click here.

Water for Life

According to statistics collected by the U.N., there are approximately 880 million people worldwide who live without access to a safe drinking water source. EVERY DAY about 5,000 children die from water-borne illnesses related to poor sanitation and a lack of access to clean drinking water, and every year 2.2 million people die from the same cause. By 2030, the number of people living in areas of severe water stress could rise to 4 billion. This enormously detrimental predicament is being addressed by human rights advocates, development and aid agencies, and local initiatives which fight to have water declared as a human right, implement reliable water system infrastructures, and to promote sustainable water use, so as to stifle and prevent further suffering related to this dire human need. The problem is also being addressed by private companies, who seek to earn large profits from the growing global scarcity of fresh water drinking supplies. It has already been estimated that the global water market is worth nearly 250 billion dollars, and that figure is set to rise to a staggering 660 billion by 2020.

Since 2008, Maude Barlow, outspoken activist and author of the bestselling book Blue Covenent: The Global Water Crisis, has been serving as the Senior Advisor on Water to the United Nations, taking enormous strides towards guaranteeing the right to access safe drinking water for all people. These efforts include the draft of a universal resolution to recognize water as a global human right, expected to be presented to the general assembly later this month by Bolivia, a country which has experienced its own social uprisings in the face of poor sanitation, unclean water, and private water companies. If this resolution is passed, says Barlow, "It would be one of the most important things the United Nations has done since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

Still, this historic resolution is facing strong opposition, mostly from Western powers with vested interests in the privatization of water. According to Barlow, countries like Canada, the United States, and Great Britain have shown considerable resistance to the resolution being passed. Developing countries around the world, on the other hand, have a dire interest in seeing this motion adopted by the U.N., as these states suffer most from the effects of climate change, draught, and water commoditization. And as the European Union recognized water as a basic human right in March of this year, it becomes clear that support for this issue is growing rapidly around the world.

Water is the basic ingredient to life everywhere, and for a state or private entity to deny humans their right to access clean and safe drinking water is clearly a violation of international human rights. In order for this moral precedent to become a regulation, it is necessary to have the explicit language put down in an official capacity by the United Nations, By the end of July, this draft should be submitted, and in upcoming months the decision will be made whether to adopt the resolution, and provide people around the world with safe water, and a secure standard of living that includes this most fundamental part to the whole of living a safe and healthy life.

Great Quote

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home- so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world.

Yet they are the world of the individual person, the neighborhood she or he lives in; the school or college that she attends; the factory, farm, or office where she works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, and equal dignity without discrimination.

Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

-Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States and one-time Chairperson for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, upon presenting "In Your Hands," her booklet on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

World Water Week

According to statistics collected by the U.N., there are approximately 880 million people worldwide who live without access to a safe drinking water source. EVERY DAY about 5,000 children die from water-borne illnesses related to poor sanitation and a lack of access to clean drinking water, and every year 2.2 million people die from the same cause. By 2030, the number of people living in areas of severe water stress could rise to 4 billion. This enormously detrimental predicament is being addressed by human rights advocates, development and aid agencies, and local initiatives which fight to have water declared as a human right, implement reliable water system infrastructures, and to promote sustainable water use, so as to stifle and prevent further suffering related to this dire human need. The problem is also being addressed by private companies, who seek to earn large profits from the growing global scarcity of fresh water drinking supplies. It has already been estimated that the global water market is worth nearly 250 billion dollars, and that figure is set to rise to a staggering 660 billion by 2020. Basically, there is a lot of money to be made off of the commoditization of our survival. In order to prevent the privatization of water, the most basic necessity to human life, it is imperative that human rights organizations work in conjunction with environmental groups to address the situation at hand; and this past week a global meeting of a variety of stakeholders proved to be an excellent example of such benevolent cooperation.

Last week was marked by a seven-day convention of over 2,500 parties from 130 countries, representing 175 different organizations, all gathering in Sweden to address the world's most urgent water-related issues. The Stockholm Water Symposium was organized by the Stockholm Water Institute, and featured a variety of workshops, lectures, and discussions which focused on water security and provision in terms of development, aid, sustainability, and public health. The global summit offered up an environment within which both contrasting and corresponding state policies would be examined and analyzed, and solutions to the world's pressing needs would be presented. Regarding the availability of water as a natural resource in relation to its comparative uses, many nations from both the industrialized and the developing world were presented with the effects of their agricultural practices. Similarly, the unregulated pollutants in drinking water, such as wastewater, pharmaceuticals, endocrine disruptor's, herbicides and pesticides were discussed across country lines; as well as the power of farm lobbyists in effecting policy. In terms of solutions, several ideas and initiatives were discussed, including the formation of plebiscites demanding water as a basic human right; water as a public trust, an idea supported by the U.N. senior advisor on water issues, Ms. Maude Barlow; and ecosystem restoration, which is an emerging movement spreading wide across the globe in hopes of establishing clean and safe watersheds for the benefit of our ecosystems and our drinking supply.

Also this week, a report was publicized at the symposium by the water advocacy organization Circle of Blue, indicating that people worldwide view water issues as surpassing the threats of climate change, becoming the most crucial environmental problem to face humanity. The desperation, disease, and death which are caused by a lack of access to clean drinking water and healthy sanitation practices were seen by a majority of the 1,000 respondents from 15 different countries to be a fundamental human concern. The most prominent facet of this concern, according to the survey, was water pollution and the public health crises that emerge from a lack of proper sanitation. Water scarcity was also a top priority for the respondents. The results varied by state, which developing countries showing greater concern for water issues in general. With most all of the environmental efforts within industrialized nations seeming to revolve around climate change in recent years, the results of this survey prove to be a startling glimpse at the immediate plight of human beings around the world.

And in terms of climate change, the participants in the Stockholm Symposium released a statement last week directed at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, where world leaders will meet to reach a resolution on a global cap on greenhouse gas emissions. The statement asserts that water must be considered as an integral facet of climate change and its effects, and states that "water is a key medium through which climate change impacts will be felt. Managing the resource effectively, including through well-conceived IWRM [Integrated Water Resources Management] approaches and at a trans boundary level, is central to successful adaptation planning and implementation, and to building the resilience of communities, countries, and regions."

The Stockholm Symposium is the second gathering to address water issues in 2009, the first being a forum organized in March by the World Water Council which included governments, water utility companies, and groups associated with environmental research and education. The forum was widely criticized by activists who claimed that the forum was exclusionary and promoted private interests moreso than advocating for the earth and the world's poor. The Stockholm International Water Institutes' program, conversely, was celebrated for its global perspective and its focus on real issues. Hopefully the convergence of participants at this massive gathering will result in resonating thought and policy geared towards water sustainability and improved access to safe drinking water at no charge to those who need it. The next World Water Week has already been set for September 5-11, 2010. Mark your calendars!

What's so bad about Cuba?

So, Cuba is a country that is rich with a vivacious cultural tradition, a progressive social system, highly developed political theory and practice, hearty food, beautiful landscapes, and a very high-profile history. It's a place that lures students of a multitude of disciplines, boasts beaches that sparkle on famous Caribbean waters, and has some of the best damn cigars in the world. But we can't go there. Why not, you ask? Well, our constitutional rights as U.S. citizens have been compromised because of an exaggerated embargo policy that frankly has caused more ill for all American people than it has benefitted anyone. In the past 40 years we have seen the struggle of the Cuban people under harsh sanctions imposed by the U.S., ideological divides that have often resulted in conflict, and even the redefinition of what a family member is, as according to George Bush.

Now it seems like the tides are turning, ever so slowly, but in a new direction. The new U.S. administration is opening up restrictions that were previously placed on family travel to Cuba, and the OAS has recently admitted Cuba into the organization. Politicians are realizing now what one group has been saying for 40 years.

The Venceremos Brigade is a group of socially conscious individuals who have made it a point to defy the outrageous U.S. policy year after year by traveling to Cuba and engaging in community development endeavors and political activities with people there. They are making big moves this year, leaving on July 19th to mark their 40th anniversary of carrying out meaningful political and social activism. My good friend Diego Iniguez-Lopez has made the trip several times, and has been featured on New York One news program, as well as in a local news story which talks more in depth about the Brigade and all of the amazing work that they do year after year to bring a change to the world. Check out this great article and find out more here.

Keep fighting the good fight, guys :-)

Oh, and by the way... in terms of my last post, We could learn a thing or two from Cuba. check it out!

peace.