In the Third World, slavery still exists, and it is one of the main humanitarian challenges in Australia’s region of the globe. Trafficking in human beings – especially children – for both labour and sex markets is the third most profitable industry in the world, after weapons and drugs.
World Vision is currently involving young people in the “Don’t Trade Lives” campaign, which seeks to raise awareness as to how First World retail choices can make a difference to Third World child labour trafficking.
Tim Costello
GWSC students, leaders with the Vision Generation movement, arranged for Tim Costello, Chris Varney, and Charlotte Baines to present their knowledge and personal insights into the global crisis of human trafficking to a group of around one hundred students, representatives of nine secondary schools.
Chris Varney, former Vision Generation National Co-Director and recently appointed Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations, gave moving personal stories of children he himself has met overseas, children living in slavery brought on by the effects of poverty. He emphasised that the rescue of these children from their circumstances was possible, but that it was a gradual process, with a focus on changing the culture that enables children to be traded into slavery, as well as the often unwitting support of the slave economy by consumers in nations such as Australia.
The campaign is not about boycotting, or about naming and shaming, Mr Varney pointed out, but about seeking to bring about long term change. As part of that long term change, students at the forum were encouraged to base their purchasing decisions on the answer they get when they ask retailers: Does this product come from child labour?
Charlotte Baines, from Monash Council, proudly stated that Monash is one of only three municipalities in Australia to have embraced the Fair Trade movement. Fair Trade seeks to ensure that Third World workers are granted humane working conditions, appropriate pay, and – of course – freedom from child slavery.
Not only are products such as coffee and tea used by the Council Fair Trade, but also the Council is setting up a Monash Fair Trade Steering Committee, to begin a dialogue on how the Council can better meet the needs of residents in supporting a fairer world for all. Ms Baines made the point that councils are traditionally about the three Rs: Roads, Rubbish, and Rates. With the adoption of Fair Trade certification, Monash Council is aiming to introduce a fourth R: Relationships. Ms Baines said that a major Relationships initiative for the council is to respond to resident concerns about Third World poverty.
She encouraged students to become involved in the Steering Committee, to ensure that they have a voice in community decisions on this matter.
Tim Costello, Chief Executive of World Vision Australia, informed the audience of students that “the blow against poverty begins with guys and girls like you.” He related the story of British politician William Wilberforce, who, in the Eighteenth Century, began a movement against slavery by raising awareness that the sugar everyone had in their tea came from slave labour. Having sugar in one’s tea, Wilberforce proclaimed, was having blood on your teeth.
In today’s world, Mr Costello revealed, chocolate is still largely the result of child slave labour, with children being trafficked to the major cocoa producing nations of Ivory Coast and Ghana, to work in the cocoa plantations there. He suggested that, with Easter coming up, students in Australia should be more aware of where their chocolate is coming from, and to support Fair Trade sourced chocolate, rather than chocolate sourced from child labour.
Mr Costello went on to say that each generation has to ask itself two questions: What’s acceptable in my world? What do I do about those things which are not acceptable?
Furthermore, the question each individual in that generation has to ask him- or herself, Mr Costello said, was: Do I matter?
One way to matter, he proposed, was to stand up to injustice, such as the child slavery that the forum had been discussing. In question time, Mr Costello said that he drew his motivation to go on with often seemingly hopeless campaigns from being “chained to hope”. He said that he believed that one day, perhaps in the time of the audience’s generation, child slavery and world poverty would, indeed, become things that only existed in history.
Following the presentations and question time, students broke into groups to discuss ideas as to how they might personally address the issues that they had been hearing about.
– By Mr Schlosser
GWSC Vision Group 