Halloween and Human Rights

I read somewhere several years ago that much of the cocoa we eat in delicious chocolatey treats comes from forced labor. Of course, this information convicted me for the time it took me to read the article, and then I promptly forgot about it. Recently, however, I read a blog posting on Rage Against the Minivan that reminded me of the link between Hersheys, Nestle, Mars, American Cadbury and child slavery. In the post, Kristen Howerton linked a BBC documentary on the chocolate trade.

I suggest you watch all 5 segments, since they're only about 10 minutes each. I was so galled by this documentary that I did a little experiment with my Christian Thought class. I had already bought my Halloween candy for my students this year. After reading Howerton's blog posting and watching the documentary, I felt ridiculous for mentally whining about paying $12 for 3 bags of chocolate when in actuality, I paid LESS than I should have since the chocolate companies get free slave labor. Ouch. So I handed out the bags of M&Ms to my students, and after they bit into savoring the chocolatey goodness (at 8am...gross) I said, "Congratulations. You all just participated in the modern day slave trade." Their faces dropped in disbelief. We then watched the documentary, and they, like me, were disgusted by the corporate and human greed that leads to child slave labor. 


There are more slaves today than at any other point in history. The current estimate for modern-day slaves stands somewhere between 12 million to 27 million. The most prominent forms of slave labor are forms of bonded labor, where someone pledges themselves against a loan that "miraculously" never gets paid off, and slaves trafficked for the sex trade.  While slaves are today a lower percentage of the human population than during the 19th century, before Western countries abolished the slave trade and chattel slavery (picture cotton plantations in Georgia),  modern slaves are ridiculously cheap, therefore fueling the illicit trade. You see, slavery is illegal in all countries, with Mauritania being the last to officially outlaw slavery in 1981. However, the high levels of government corruption in many poor countries allows the slave trade and the use of slave labor to persist and often thrive. To read more on the human sex slave trade, read Half the Sky, one of my favorite books. 


Kevin Bales, President of Free the Slaves, states the following about how "market economics" continue the tide of forced labor:

"In the United States before the Civil War, the average slave cost the equivalent of about fifty thousand dollars. I'm not sure what the average price of a slave is today, but it can't be more than fifty or sixty dollars.

Such low prices influence how the slaves are treated. Slave owners used to maintain long relationships with their slaves, but slaveholders no longer have any reason to do so. If you pay just a hundred dollars for someone, that person is disposable, as far as you are concerned...

And while the price of slaves has gone down, the return on the slaveholder's investment has skyrocketed. In the antebellum South, slaves brought an average return of about 5 percent. Now bonded agricultural laborers in India generate more than a 50 percent profit per year for their slaveholders, and a return of 800 percent is not at all uncommon for holders of sex slaves."

So where do we as consumers fit into this? We have the power of the purse. If we curb our demand of Hersheys, or Mars, or Kraft chocolates, and demand these companies pursue cocoa sources from fair labor only, and that the US government regulate these companies to ensure they follow fair trade sourcing, we can impact the lives of children forced into slavery all the way in Ghana. Write your congressman, buy fair trade chocolate with the official seal (same goes for coffee, by the way), and do your part as a consumer. You can even join the #nohersheyshalloween movement and sign a petition to get Hersheys, the largest offender for child labor cocoa, to pay attention to its consumers or lose profit. To read about ethical candy options for trick or treating, click here. 


In the meantime, look for this symbol and buy fair trade. 
Is it more expensive? Yes. Personally, I'm OK paying a little bit more knowing that I'm not contributing to human rights violations around the world. Not to guilt you or anything...