Sarah J spoke with Jo Hill about people trafficking and chocolate
With summer fast approaching many of us will be thinking of holidays
and travelling; however, some people don't get to travel by choice.
Some people are forced to travel and work in other countries or places
and aren't paid for their work. This is referred to as the modern day
'slave trade' or 'people trafficking'. Sarah J got in touch with Jo
Hill, a local campaigner for STOP THE TRAFFIK, to find out more and
was surprised to hear how even chocolate can have ingredients that
have been through trafficked hands!
Sarah: Cross
Rhythms users may know very little about STOP THE TRAFFIK; tell us a
little bit about it.
Jo: Ok. Well STOP THE
TRAFFIK is a global movement that was founded in 2006 by Reverend
Steve Chalke and Phil Lane. They're a campaigning coalition of over a
thousand groups and NGOs and businesses, and they work in solidarity
with grassroots movements all over the world from those most at risk
to countries where victims are likely to end up
Sarah: So what is 'trafficking'? 'Cause some people will be
like, what does that mean?
Jo: Well, basically
human trafficking means to be moved / taken somewhere after being
tricked, forced or coerced into a situation of exploitation. Being
moved can be across borders or just to a different part of the same
city / country. People can be trafficked for various different
purposes; including sexual exploitation, forced labour, child benefit
fraud, forced marriages and so on.
Sarah: So
it's really the modern day slave trade of moving people and those
individuals then becoming slaves to whatever their owner wants to use
them for?
Jo: Exactly, yes that exactly.
Sarah: It's quite shocking really isn't it in terms of
historically we read about the slave trade and we think yeah I'm glad
that that finished. But actually the reality is it hasn't finished at
all.
Jo: Definitely. The reality is that twenty
seven million people are currently enslaved around the world today in
various forms including trafficking.
Sarah:
That's a massive number of people. I guess that's an estimate as well
and there's probably a lot more?
Jo: That's
exactly it.
Sarah: Now you've mentioned that
there's various forms of what people may then end up being engaged in
once they've been sold on to someone, whether it's prostitution, or
whether it's working in factories and whether it's a whole heap of
other things as well. Have you got any idea what percentages of people
have been trafficked to different places?
Jo: I
haven't got specific percentages in terms of where different amounts
of people have been taken (80% of those trafficked are women and it is
estimated that 79% of these end up in sex industry. 50% of victims
are children). I have percentages for example that one person is
trafficked internationally every minute, in context that means in one
9-5 day four hundred and eighty people have been trafficked.
Sarah: Oh wow, that's shocking isn't it? That's a huge
amount of people. I can see why lots of people are passionate about
this topic. A lot of previous things that have gone out on the
Community Choice radio programme I present, that mention things about
trafficking, have been very much related to prostitution. That's had a
lot of press releases sent out about it. I guess what's had less press
attention is this idea of ending up involving people in factory work
and stuff like that. Tell us a bit more about that.
Jo: Well fixing on the current campaign - the current STOP THE
TRAFFIK campaign - March on Mars. This is aimed at persuading Mars to
become traffik free, which Cadbury's Dairy Milk incidentally will do
this summer. So traffik free will mean that the cocoa plantations
which children are working on in the west coast of Africa, that's
Côte d'Ivoire or the Ivory Coast where over a third of the worlds
chocolate comes from, they would be traffik free. So Cadbury's Dairy
Milk chocolate is going traffik free, which would mean there would be
no 'worst forms of child labour' (which includes trafficking and
slavery) involved in the production of the chocolate. The focus is now
on Mars to persuade them to do the same, which would be a really
positive move for Mars.
Sarah: So this is quite
shocking really in terms of the Fair-trade agenda, most people have
got an idea that it's good to buy Fair-trade chocolate 'cause at least
then the people that are trading their goods get a decent deal out of
it. But it sounds from what you're saying that there are actually
companies within the UK that could well be using people that have been
trafficked?
Jo: The problem is that a lot of
these major chocolate companies buy their cocoa beans from what you
would call the middle men who've bought them from various cocoa farms
where they could be using trafficked labour. These beans will then be
mixed up with other beans so it's not clear where the traffik beans
are.
Sarah: You've already given us some shocking
statistics Jo about how many people are trafficked. We're now
particularly looking at the chocolate industry and the campaign around
that and trying to encourage organisations here within the UK to make
sure that the cocoa beans that they end up having are traffic free.
Have you got some statistics in terms of how many people would be
trafficked into that particular industry?
Jo:
Thousands of children working on the cocoa farms of West Africa have
been trafficked. So that's quite a shocking figure to begin with. Then
you hear sixty four percent of those working on the cocoa farms are
under the age of sixteen. Which again is very shocking.
Sarah: Would we have any idea within that - you said that
they're under sixteen so they're definitely children. Would they be as
young as like four years?
Jo: Other reports have
stated many of them are under twelve.
Sarah: It
kind of makes me ponder about eating chocolate right now. You've
mentioned that Cadbury's is just about to become traffik free. How do
they do that?
Jo: It's a case of closer
monitoring of their supply chain.. There are various different ways
they can go about this. There is the UTZ, which would ensure
independent checks on cocoa farms were carried out. That's an
initiative that Mars and various others are involved in at the moment.
But this is not intensive enough process to ensure chocolate is
completely traffik free.
Sarah: So in terms of
other companies in the UK that still haven't signed up to this; how
can people in the UK respond to that? You've mentioned that STOP THE
TRAFFIK have presently got a campaign about it. How could we connect
with that?
Jo: Well I think it's important to
use your consumer power. There is currently a card that can be signed
or to phone Mars and tell them that you're not happy about their
practices. So basically finding out where your favourite chocolate bar
comes from and doing something about it if you don't like where it
comes from; not necessarily stopping buying products but just holding
people to account who are using chocolate - forms of chocolate
production which you're not happy with.
Sarah:
So if people wanted to actually sign the postcard that you've just
mentioned. How do they get hold of that from STOP THE
TRAFFIK?
Jo: It's downloadable from the website,
if you go to www.stopthetraffik.org you can find out all about
the campaign there.
Sarah: Brilliant stuff. So
I'm guessing that there are other companies out there that haven't
signed up for it yet. I'm guessing that the voice of their customers
is quite a huge influencing factor for them to change their
practice?
Jo: Yes it is. The consumer power as
I've said is very important.
Sarah: You've just
explained to us how we could get involved in changing some of the
chocolate industry. I'm wondering what other ways people could engage
with STOP THE TRAFFIK?
Jo: OK. Well all over the
country there's action groups working on STOP THE TRAFFIK'S campaigns.
So getting in contact with people in your local area, who are working
on projects in your local area. Working together on new ideas of how
to combat some of the problems with human trafficking and finding out
from STOP THE TRAFFIK what the recent developments and new campaigns
there are either from the website or by e-mail contact.
Sarah: Now your role as a volunteer is really to inform
people and let people know about the current picture. So I guess
people once they've got the information, they may feel like they want
to give talks at different organisations or gatherings of people and
share their information as well. So they could also do what you do,
couldn't they?
Jo: Absolutely yes. I've spoken
to a variety of different audiences and that's something that you can
do with a group in your local area. It is very important to create
awareness and communicating the complexities of human trafficking so
that the signs can be recognised and the issue understood is vital. So
from your local schools to universities, to trade unions, to churches
and in various forms whether it be debates or workshops or talks,
these are all very important. Just getting it out there.
Sarah: If people wanted more details about that, that
website once again for them.
Jo: www.stopthetraffik.org
Since this interview, and only 2 months into the March on Mars campaign, Mars announced that they will certify their ENTIRE global product range as part of the rain forest allicance - which means traffik and slave free- by 2020. To show their commitment to this and to give us something in the intern period, in the UK and Ireland Galaxy bars will be traffik free by 2010.
Us campaigners with the help of STOP THE TRAFFIK are beginning to see signs of success so we are turning the attention to Nestle and asking what they are doing. You can now download campaign letters to Nestle from the march on Mars website.
The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.