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Archive for the ‘labor’ Category

Cuckoo for cocoa: Valentine’s chocolate in the age of unfair trade

Posted in activism, africa, americas, awareness, children, consumption, corporate responsibility, fair trade, food, labor, production chains, united states on February 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

(image by the International Labor Rights Forum)
The absurdity of the fact that many of us in the first world show our love for one another with products produced by the blood, sweat, and tears of others ought to give all of us pause.  Valentine’s Day offers a unique opportunity to probe into the reality of [...]

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The place to be: For child traffickers, Haiti’s chaos is ripe with opportunity

Posted in americas, children, labor, natural disasters, refugees, sex on January 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

In Haiti’s unstable post-quake atmosphere, at least one industry is poised to flourish. For those who buy and sell children for sex and cheap labor, Haiti is ripe with opportunity,
Nicolette Grams, staff member of the International Justice Mission, writes in the Atlantic.  Grams uses her article to illuminate the escalating threat of child trafficking through [...]

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Circus Slaves

Posted in asia, awareness, children, families, human goods original reporting, india, labor, nepal, policy, sex on November 9, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Dutch filmmakers Chris Relleke and Jascha de Wilde’s 2002 film, Starkiss, depicts a young girl gripping a rope with her teeth as she is spun several meters in the air in front of a mesmerized audience. The film explores the enslavement of children in Indian circuses, what the filmmakers describe as “a world hidden [...]

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Children of Industry: South Asia’s child labor dilemma

Posted in asia, bangladesh, children, consumption, india, labor, policy, prevention, production chains, prosecution on November 5, 2009 | 1 Comment »

These are the hands of an 8-year-old …

Child laborer in a Dhaka garment factory (photo: G.M.B. Akash – click for more)
The ubiquitous smile of the poor should not be taken at face value; it conceals inexhaustible grief,
Jeremy Seabrook cautions in his September piece in the New Internationalist. The longtime reporter on poverty in South Asia [...]

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Sweet Dreams: The battle for the chocolate trade

Posted in africa, awareness, children, corporate responsibility, cote d'ivoire, families, food, global economics, labor, policy, prevention, production chains, video on October 24, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Democracy Now! interviewed Free the Slaves founder Kevin Bales, a lifelong abolitionist and author of several pivotal works in the corpus of today’s anti-slavery literature, including Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, and the recent The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America. He defined slavery for interviewer Amy Goodman as,
“One [...]

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Rare gems, cheap lives: Tanzanite’s disposable child miners

Posted in africa, children, consumption, corporate responsibility, families, global economics, labor, production chains, tanzania, video on October 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

“I’m looking at a piece right now, and it’s flashing red.  It is very exotic,”
London jewelry designer Stephen Webster told Time’s Sarah Larenaudie in 2007.  “In top-end jewelry now, the client is way over branded luxury goods.  They are looking for limited availability or one of a kind.”
But when it comes to mining Tanzanite, the [...]

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Light up: Malawi’s child laborers poisoned by export tobacco fields

Posted in africa, children, consumption, corporate responsibility, fair trade, global economics, labor, malawi, production chains on September 20, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Multinational tobacco giants have been long-vilified for marketing cancer-causing cigarettes for consumption by children in Europe and the United States, and increasingly in the developing world. But even as public outrage has slightly softened the aggressive marketing agendas in the West (or at least rendered them less overt), less attention has been paid to the [...]

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All that glitters: Child labor and Pakistani bangle-making

Posted in asia, awareness, children, consumption, global economics, labor, pakistan, production chains on October 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

IRIN recently reported on the International Labor Organization’s study of child labor in Pakistan’s bangle industry.  According to the study, children must hunch over hot stoves for average 12-hour days in order to produce glass bangles.
Pakistan’s Federal Bureau of Statistics claims 3.3 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are currently involved in [...]

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The shadow of globalization: Slavery, smuggling, and sex

Posted in global, global economics, labor, refugees, sex, video on October 9, 2008 | 1 Comment »

(Photo source:  Wide Angle)
For anyone wanting to understand how globalization and new migration trends are affecting the illegal trafficking and smuggling of humans, it’s worth watching PBS’s Wide Angle episode, “Dying to Leave.”
Although produced in 2003, the short but excellent documentary, which can be viewed on their website, provides a wide angle indeed on how [...]

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Calling it slavery: John Miller reflects on Wilberforce

Posted in awareness, global economics, labor, policy, prevention, prosecution, sex on September 15, 2008 | 1 Comment »

“Victims of slavery tend to be isolated, relatively poor, and badly educated,” former U.S. ambassador at large on modern-day slavery John Miller writes in the current Wilson Quarterly.  “They don’t hold press conferences.”

Miller gives an outline of the nuanced topography of today’s fight against slavery founded in both global policy and personal experience.  He [...]

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