Dear Global Justice Readers,
Many people's spirits were lifted by the inauguration of President Obama this week. Now comes the challenging work of making the promised change real.
This week we are releasing our new report, The Right to Stay Home: Alternatives to Mass Displacement and Forced Migration in North America, online. We hope our readers use this report as a tool to help focus attention on the urgent need to make Mexico, Immigration, and NAFTA reform front and center priorities of the new administration.
The report focuses on the powerful economic forces that drive migration from Mexico to the United States. It brings together the voices of a range of progressive economists, anthropologists, law professors, journalists, and leaders of social organizations on both sides of the border who analyze the complexities of the migration dynamic and propose strategies to mitigate them.
The report's contributors include: Jeff Faux, Armando Bartra, David Bacon, Gustavo Esteva, Laura Carlsen, Bill Hing, Amy Shannon, Oscar Chacon, Maria Dolores París, John Gibler, Berta Lujan, Dan Labotz and Ted Lewis.
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The topic of Mexico will be unavoidable for President Obama. Even prior to his inauguration he met with Felipe Calderon -- the weak and ever more isolated president of Mexico. At the conclusion of that meeting, Obama called for a "NAFTA upgrade." We hope that means our new president is sending the signal that -- as he promised in his campaign -- NAFTA is no longer sacrosanct and that real change may come to our diplomacy with Mexico. We offer our report as a tool in the fight to make sure that happens.
During the last year more than five thousand Mexicans have died in a drug war that has no end in sight. Meanwhile, Mexican government revenues that depend heavily on income from oil sales are dropping sharply as both current prices and overall reserves decline. The value of the Mexican Peso has dropped nearly 30 percent since last September and unemployment is rising rapidly as Mexico faces a magnified version of the deep recession sweeping the United States. Large-scale migration to the United States that has provided an escape valve for Mexican social volatility over the last quarter century is an increasingly difficult option during the sharp contraction of the U.S. workforce underway today.
The sense of crisis is real, but the path of growing military support for Calderon's government that Bush pursued via the "Merida Initiative" (Plan Mexico) is not a viable or acceptable path for Obama to take. In this light, recent comments by departing Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, were chilling. He raised the possibility of a security "surge" on the United States' side of the border should escalating drug war violence in Mexico move north. His comments came on the heels of a United States Joint Forces Command study that compared Mexico to Pakistan as one of two "large and important states" with potential for "rapid and sudden collapse."
2009 is a pivotal year for both Mexico and the United States. We urge you to read and make use of our report today and to stay tuned for further developments.
Best,
The Mexico Team
source: Global Exchange
Pass it on
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Sorry kids, but no thank you.
Send World's Finest a Free Fax Today!
Over 40,000 schools and youth groups depend on World’s Finest Chocolate for their annual fundraisers. The profits from these sales support a wide range of causes and make up an integral part of many school budgets. Yet while nearly fifty cents of every one-dollar bar goes to support local schools or charity groups, scarcely pennies reach impoverished cocoa farmers and their families. Global Exchange is working with schools, churches and charitable groups across the country to call upon World’s Finest to broaden the good that our communities can do in using its fundraising bars by offering Fair Trade.
We feel that this is an important way their company can contribute to a comprehensive solution to child labor in the cocoa industry and use their products not only to support community development for our children but for children everywhere. Don’t let the profits from your next school fundraiser come at the expense of another child’s education on one of the world’s cocoa farms. Send World's Finest a free fax today and share with them your experience fundraising with thier products (or their fairly traded competitors) and the depth and breadth of support for fair trade in your community. You can use our sample text or write a message in your own words below!
Need help converting your groups fundraiser to fair trade?
Download our fundraising action pack with information and tips on how you can lobby your fundraising supplier to sell fair trade or switch your group to a supplier that does! For a list of companies that offer 100% Fair Trade Certified Chocolate, many of which have fundraising programs click here!
Source: Global Exchange
Fair Trade, Organic Chocolate available at Planet One Gifts. Vegan selection available.
Click here to go to Global Exchange and send a fax to Edmond Opler,
Chairman and CEO of World's Finest Chocolate. Tell him you are shocked and dismayed to learn that he still does not utilize sources of Fair Trade chocolate.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
The Chocolate Industry: Poverty Behind the Sweetness
Read GX Fair Trade Director's
Cocoa Op-Ed on Common Dreams
Commitment to Ethical Cocoa
Factsheet-- Cocoa Producer Stories --Fair Trade and The Environment-- Resources-- Key Child Labor Documents
The six largest cocoa producing countries are the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, and Cameroon. Cocoa has especially significant effects on the economy and the population in these countries. For example, in Ghana, cocoa accounts for 40% of total export revenues, and two million farmers are employed in cocoa production. The Ivory Coast is the world's largest cocoa producer, providing 43% of the world's cocoa.
In 2000, a report by the US State Department concluded that in recent years approximately 15,000 children aged 9 to 12 have been sold into forced labor on cotton, coffee and cocoa plantations in the north of the country. A June 15, 2001 document (PDF 850kb) released by the Geneva, Switzerland-based International Labor Organization (ILO) reported that trafficking in children is widespread in West Africa. (For ILO definitions of these labor violations, see ILO Convention 182 on Child Labor ILO Convention 29 on Forced Labor.)
The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) followed up these reports with an extensive study of cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, directly involving over 4,500 producers. The results were released in August 2002. An estimated 284,000 children are working on cocoa farms in hazardous tasks such as using machetes and applying pesticides and insecticides without the necessary protective equipment. Many of these children work on family farms, the children of cocoa farmers who are so trapped in poverty they have to make the hard choice to keep their children out of school to work. The IITA also reported that about 12,500 children working on cocoa farms had no relatives in the area, a warning sign for trafficking.
These child laborers face arduous work, as cacao pods must be cut from high branches with long-handled machetes, split open, and their beans scooped out. Children who are involved in the worst labor abuses come from countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Togo -- nations that are even more destitute than the impoverished Ivory Coast. Parents in these countries sell their children to traffickers believing that they will find honest work once they arrive in Ivory Coast and then send their earnings home. But as soon as they are separated from their families, the young boys are made to work for little or nothing. The children work long and hard -- they head into the fields at 6:00 in the morning and often do not finish until 6:30 at night.
" Though he had worked countless days harvesting cocoa pods -- 400 of which are needed to make a pound of chocolate -- Diabate has never tasted the finished product. "I don't know what chocolate is," he told the press.
It is unbelievable and unacceptable that, in the beginning of the 21st century, the children of West Africa are trapped in such desperation and even slave labor.
These children typically lack the opportunity for education, leaving them with no way out of their cycle of poverty. The IITA noted that 66% of child cocoa workers in the Ivory Coast did not attend school. About 64% of children on cocoa farms are under age 14, meaning that the loss of an education comes at an early age for the majority of children on cocoa farms.
The cause: "Free trade," structural adjustment, and corporate control
These problems are largely tied to insufficient income for cocoa producers and their communities. The IITA found that annual West African cocoa revenues average $30 to $110 per household member, making "it difficult for families to have sufficient income to meet their needs." Mana Osei Yawu III, Chief of Niveneso Village in Ghana has said " We had no water in the village, we just had dirty water from rivers and streams. People spent a lot of time collecting water and there was always someone who was sick. Many people in the village were wondering how much longer they could stay in the village without water, because they were getting sick. The money we used to get from selling our cocoa beans to the government didn't give us enough to buy materials or a pump for our own water supply."
Producer income remain low because major chocolate and cocoa processing companies have refused to take any steps to ensure stable and sufficient prices for cocoa producers. World cocoa prices fluctuate widely and have been well below production costs in the last decade. Though cocoa prices have shown moderate increases in the past few years, cocoa producers remain steeped in debt accumulated when prices were below production costs. Producers typically also get only half the world price, as they must use exploitative middlemen to sell their crop.
The effects of insufficient cocoa income have been exacerbated by deregulation of agriculture in West Africa, which abolished commodity boards across the region, leaving small farmers at the mercy of the market. This economic crisis forced farmers to cut their labor costs. The outcome was a downward spiral for labor in the region, and a surge in reports of labor abuses ranging from farmers pulling children out of school to work on family farms to outright child trafficking and slavery. These small farmers and their children remained trapped in a cycle of poverty, without hope for sufficient income or access to basic education or health care. As the IITA summarized, "Interviews with community leaders indicated that the greater employment of family labor was a common response to the recent drop in cocoa prices and the crisis in cocoa incomes. In addition to the substitution of family labor for paid labor, farmers have also reduced the use of purchased inputs. The net effect of both of these factors has led to lower productivity and incomes, and, perhaps most importantly, to reduced household investments in children's education."
For years, US chocolate manufacturers have said they are not responsible for the conditions on cocoa plantations since they don't own them. But the $13 billion chocolate industry is heavily consolidated, with just two firms -- Hershey's and M&M/Mars -- controlling two-thirds of the US chocolate candy market. Surely, these global corporations have the power and the ability to reform problems in the supply chain. What they lack is the will.
After a string of media exposes and the threat of government action jeopardized their image, the chocolate industry finally agreed to take action in 2001. On November 30, 2001 the US chocolate industry released a Protocol and Joint Statement outlining their plans to work toward eliminating the worst forms of child labor (see ILO Convention 182) and forced labor (see ILO Convention 29) in cocoa production.
Unfortunately, the plan does not guarantee stable and sufficient prices for cocoa, or any guarantee that cocoa farmers will receive a fair income in the end. Without such a guarantee, there is now way to ensure that abusive child labor on cocoa farms will cease for good.
The solution: Fair Trade cocoa and chocolate
Fortunately, there is a way to correct the economic imbalances of the cocoa system: Fair Trade. Fair Trade chocolate and cocoa products are marked with the "Fair Trade Certified" and Fair Trade Federation labels. Fair Trade is an international monitoring and certification system that guarantees a minimum price under direct contracts, prohibits abusive child labor, and promoted environmental sustainability. The Fair Trade system guarantees that farmers receive a "floor price" of at least $.80/pound for non-organic cocoa and $0.89/pound for organic cocoa. Producers receive $150 per metric ton above the world price if the world price rises above the Fair Trade floor price. This gives farmers the stable and sufficient income they need to support their families with dignity. Fair Trade prohibits abusive child labor and forced labor. Farms are monitored once per year to ensure that all conditions are met.See the full criteria for Fair Trade (PDF 278kb). Fair Trade cocoa comes from Belize, Bolivia, Cameroon, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Ghana, Nicaragua, and Peru. Read our cooperative profiles to learn more about these Fair Trade cocoa farmers.
Our Fair Trade Chocolate/cocoa Campaign is pressuring large companies like World's Finest Chocolate and other members of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association of America to sell Fair Trade chocolate and cocoa products immediately. We also support a network of K-12 schools, campus groups and community activists advocating for Fair Trade chocolate and cocoa around the USA.
source: Global Exchange
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