Forced Labor is Bad

 Wouldn't it be good if rich American chocolate companies (namely Hershey’s and Mars) stopped using child slavery overseas, in countries not powerful enough to stop it? I would like that. Some American companies have just outsourced slavery overseas to countries in Asia and africa that aren’t developed enough to stop it. This is why Hershey’s isn’t fair trade certified, because fair trade buisnesses dont do slavery and exploitation. This is very bad, and it also isn't sustainable.  

This relates to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) because SDG 8, target 8.7 states that we should “Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms”. Currently, 190 million children have been subjected to forced labor at the beginning of 2020 and another 9 million have been put at risk due to covid. 

Many people consider slavery to have been long gone since the end of the American civil war. However, after the decolonization of the 50’s to the 70’s, companies saw that there were a lot of weak new nations that they could exploit without actually owning them as colonies. Prime examples of young countries being exploited are Chad, Mali, Benin, and Cameroon,(all formerly French colonies) where 35% of children between 5 and 17 are working.

Now, let’s look at a country that’s been successful in dealing with modern slavery, Croatia. Croatia has banned goods that come from slavery, identified survivors of slavery and supported them to exit an remain out of it by implementing a free to use reporting mechanism, and adressed risk factors (institutions, social systems etc) that enable modern slavery by having labor laws apply to everyone, including domestic and migrant workers.

There are ways that people on an individual level can take action against modern slavery. This would be not buying products made from slave labor, doing research about what companies are ethical and which aren’t (it’s extremely easy, Hershey’s stuff was right on Wikipedia), and telling your friends about which countries are good and bad.

Slavery is very much still alive, mostly in poor and over exploited countries. Companies like to use slave labor in those countries because it’s cheap and it isn't direct colonization so it stays under the rug. Some governments have taken action against it, and you can take action on an individual level by not buying rom companies that use slavery, researching which countries are good and which are bad, and telling other people where not to buy things from.

Sources: 

“Child labor”, our world in statistics https://ourworldindata.org/child-labor accessed 11/5/21

“Croatia”, global slavery index https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2019/data/country-data/croatia/ accessed 11/7/21

“The Hershey company”, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hershey_Company accessed 11/3/21

Used to make the meme:

“Esmbot”, project lounge https://projectlounge.pw/esmBot/ accessed 11/5/21