[THS] !! The Challenge Of Modern Slavery

[Peter Webster]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19879.htm

The Challenge Of Modern Slavery

By Loretta Napoleoni

07/05/08 "ICH" -- - Slavery is in our refrigerators. From fruit to beef, from
sugar to coffee, slave labor brings food to our tables. “Miguel,” a Mexican
slave freed by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a US human-rights
organization, may have harvested the apples we eat at breakfast. Miguel
picked fruit under guard in the United States. He had traveled to el norte to
earn the money to pay for treatment for his six-year-old son who has
cancer; instead, his employer enslaved him.

The cocoa we drink while reading the newspaper or watching the morning
news shows may come from the Ivory Coast, which supplies half the world
market. Children and adolescents from even poorer neighboring countries,
such as Mali, trek all the way to the cocoa plantations to earn a subsistence
salary. Often, they end up working as slaves in remote farms. “Nineteen-
year-old Drissa was one such young man. When he was freed in 2000, he
had just gone through a ‘breaking-in’ period as his master accustomed him
to enslavement. His back was laced with scars and wounds from being
whipped.”

Almost every product we consume has a hidden dark history, from slave
labor to piracy, from counterfeit to fraud, from theft to money laundering.
We know very little about these economic secrets because modern
consumers live inside the market matrix.

The first thought that comes to mind when we discover that our hot
chocolate comes directly from slave labor suggests that we boycott Ivory
Coast cocoa. But this decision would not help free thousands of young
slaves like Drissa. On the contrary, it could make their lives much worse and
harm honest farmers as well. “Africa is like a body infested with parasites.
One has to be careful not to kill the body to get rid of the parasites,”
summarized Rico Carish. Millions of people depend for their sustenance on
this parasitic rogue economy. The alternative could impoverish them
further, if it does not put them at risk of death.

Often, western intervention, even when willing and well intentioned,
achieves very little. In the case of many African commodities, Western
companies have no direct contact with farmers. Trade occurs through local
intermediaries, middlemen, and shippers. The profits of slavery are
collected at the farm gate, a practice that effectively incorporates them in
the price of the product. Often the intermediaries do not even know or care
that slave labor is involved in the production of the goods they trade. This
explains why halting imports from the Ivory Coast will not end slavery but
force thousands of honest farmers and their families into poverty. To
eradicate the problem, one must attack the root causes, a task that only
local governments can accomplish. But good governance also proves a rare
commodity on the African continent.

Even more shocking is the discovery that in the twenty-first century, slavery
is booming on a global scale. According to the United Nations, slavery is
growing at an unprecedented rate. Figures put global slavery at 27 million
persons, a generation of modern slaves that, according to the International
Labor Organization, produces yearly profits of around $31 billion. Population
explosion and great migrations coupled with globalization have boosted the
slave trade. “The increase in slavery is linked to globalization,” concurs
Kevin Bales, author of Ending Slavery: How We Will Free Today’s Slaves.
“But this is not about sweat-shop workers existing on misery wages. Slaves
are under the complete, violent control of another person; they are
economically exploited and get only enough food and shelter to stay alive.
For millions of victims, their experience differs little in hardship from that of
slaves hundreds of years ago.”

Slavery’s resurgence exerts a direct effect on its cost, which has now fallen
for decades. Bates calculated that, while over the past 3,000 years the
average price of a slave has ranged from $20,000 to $80,000 (adjusted to
current dollar value) now people can be bought and sold for a tenth of
these prices. After World War II, we witnessed a sudden surge in the
supply of slave labor, pushing prices down. Ironically, this phenomenon
began as a consequence of decolonization, which shifted slave ownership
from colonizers to countrymen. Today’s slaves are predominantly enslaved
by their national peers and not by foreign powers. Like other commodity
markets, slavery operates by the law of supply and demand, and today
supply proves plentiful among the millions living on a dollar to two dollars a
day.

Consumers remain blissfully ignorant of these facts. The market matrix, a
complex maze of smoke and mirrors, hides the exploitative nature of trade
and commerce. The shelves of Western supermarkets are stacked with
items produced by people in developing countries who earn a miniscule
fraction of their value. Consumers, if they ever chose to think about it,
might be shocked to learn who pockets most of the profits of their daily
grocery shopping.

Loretta Napoleoni: An expert on financing of terrorism, Loretta advises
several governments on counter-terrorism. She is senior partner of G Risk, a
London based risk agency. - She is a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins
University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in
Washington DC. and a Rotary Scholar at the London School of Economics..