Guilt Free Chocolate

Avoiding Chocolate Made With Child Labor
(part of the Lost Childhood series)

(70% Of World's Cocoa Produced With Child Labor)

As your child (and most likely you too) set out to enjoy this Halloween's bounty of chocolate laden treats there is a very important question that needs to be answered... Where did that chocolate come from?

West Africa produces just over 70 percent of the world's supply of cocoa. Each of the countries that produces this cocoa allow the use of child labor on their vast cocoa farms. The largest producer of these five countries, Ivory Coast, also permits and often encourages the use of forced labor (slavery). All are known to have large human trafficking rings active within their borders supplying children to work the fields of the sprawling cocoa plantations. 

This is where your Halloween chocolate comes from. 

Trafficking And Chocolate 

The children who are sent to the fields to collect the cocoa are not always victims of trafficking. Yet as the demand for cheaper chocolate goes up the number of children being trafficked into the slave trade goes up too. These children, often purchased or bribed into slavery, are subjected to physical, mental, and sexual abuses in an effort to force them into submission. The goal of the trafficker is to break the spirit of the child so that the chances of a runaway becomes minimal. 

Children who are trafficked in Western Africa can be used for many things throughout their life as slaves. Some will be used as child soldiers in times of conflict. Others can become victims of sexual violence and abuse. The use of children as sex slaves is a growing problem across the globe as "sex tourism" becomes an ever increasingly lucrative trade. Yet despite these more notable abuses, most children trafficked in West Africa will be used at some point as child labor. This allows the trafficker the ability to make a reliable income off their slaves while waiting for other higher earning jobs to come along. 

This horrific reality is one that children who are trafficked in West Africa face. They have no say in where they are forced to work or what abusive task they will be forced to perform. From the moment they wake up in the morning to the moment they are allowed to go to sleep they are forced to work in one way or another. There is no rest for these children. With each passing day the hope of freedom is ground out of them as they are degraded and abused at the whim of their owner.

It is modern day slavery.

Chocolate comes into the picture as trafficked children are "employed" on West Africa's vast cocoa plantations. These large operations (many of which are supported by chocolate giants like Hersey's) willingly and knowingly pay the traffickers as the children take to their fields. The use of slave labor allows these farms to increase their yields in multiple ways; including inhumane treatment of forced laborers, longer hours, more strenuous tasks performed, and little to no time for rest between heavy tasks.

The children who work on these plantations are subjected to physical abuse for even the most minor infringements or accidents. If injured while performing dangerous tasks the children are expected to continue working. If an accident includes a life threatening injury the child is given the most minimal treatment and then beaten before being sent back to work. Mercy is not commonly shown to these children. 

Avoiding Chocolate Produced With Child Labor

When buying chocolate this holiday season there are multiple ways to insure that you are buying chocolate that was not made with cocoa produced with child labor (or slave labor). Though the first way is rather simple really, just don't buy chocolate. But for most this way is just too difficult since we have a horrible addiction to the sweet sensations chocolate produces in our mind and mouth. So ignoring the obvious solution of avoidance... here are a few ways you can have a guilt free chocolate fix. 

 

 Fair Trade

This route is expensive for both the consumers and the farmers alike. While it ensures that the chocolate you are buying was produced by a farmer who was paid a fair price and produced it using ethical labor practices; it does not tell you how much the farmer paid for that certification. This is the portion of that label that is often overlooked. And yet it is important to note that the farmer (or farmers, which is most often the case) had to pay thousands of dollars to gain that label. 

So while you can rest assured that the farmer did not use child labor you cannot rest assured that the process is as nice and neat as you would be led to believe. 

For example-

Besides the thousands of dollars spent to get certified (which could had been used to invest in the workers themselves), the farmers are often paying dues to cooperatives. This increases the amount of money the farmers need to make before their product is worth the time it takes to produce. The increased cost also drives down the amount the farmer would otherwise be capable of paying their workers. 

Yet, outside all this, in the case of child labor and chocolate production fair trade is a valuable tool in helping you avoid chocolate made utilizing child labor. 

Organic

The vast majority of organic chocolate comes from South America. So while all organic chocolate may not be completely child free, the source country on the label should indicate another country outside West Africa. This method allows you to decide to buy chocolate that is not produced in the five countries mentioned in the first picture (all of whom are well known for child labor). Yet unless you research the country of origin it does not assure you that the producer did not utilize child labor. 

This method requires the consumer to research both the producer's labor practices and the common labor practices of the country where the cocoa came from. It also may require the consumer to research the ecological cost of cocoa produced in countries that are home to the Amazon Rain Forest. 

Source Country 

The most direct way to find out where your chocolate comes from and how it was produced is to put in the effort to research the producer and the country of origin. This method allows you to both gain knowledge of how your chocolate was produced and where it comes from. To do this you will find it is easier if you find a brand that is Fair Trade or certified organic. You may also want to find a brand you like (since that is the reason behind buying the product anyway). 

Once you find a product you know you want and just can't live without the real fun starts...

First you want to make sure that your chocolate is not made with cocoa from Africa.

Then try and find out just how many companies or facilities the product has gone through before reaching you. Chances are that if the product takes the shortest route from farm to shelf it is child labor free. If the product has to go from one country to the next (and then some) the chances for utilizing child labor in the production and/or harvesting of the cocoa goes up. It also means that less of your money is going back to the person who produced the cocoa in the first place. 

These two steps will greatly reduce the probability of your chocolate being made through the use of child labor or slave labor. 

Don't want to do all that work?

You can always visit sites like 'Stop The Traffik' to learn more about buying chocolate made without child labor. You will still have to do a little reading. But if you made it to the bottom of this post and didn't switch over to a YouTube video of cats or whatnot... I guess a little more reading won't kill you. 

Happy Halloween From All The Alder's Ledge Team

Want To Contact Us?

Tweet To Us On Twitter: @alders_ledge

Source Documents 

(note: not all sources listed)

Food Is Power.org 

http://www.foodispower.org/slavery-in-the-chocolate-industry/

Flo-cert.net 

http://www.flo-cert.net/flo-cert/fileadmin/user_upload/certification/cost/en/20120120/PC_FeeSysSPO_ED_23_en.pdf 

 

Stop The Traffik 

http://www.stopthetraffik.org/campaign/chocolate 

Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/30/conflict-free-chocolate-easter_n_2985023.html?ref=topbar

A Legacy Of Mere Existence

The Fate Of A Displaced Generation
(The Darkness Visible series)

Scars of the previous generation are the building blocks for the next...

Thirty plus years have passed since the last massive wave of Karen refugees crossed the border to find safety in Thailand. Those who made the journey faced landmines, mortar bombardment, militias and brutal soldiers on both sides, starvation, thirst, and the reality of being homeless and without a homeland. These Karen would be the one of the first generations to raise their children in foreign lands. These Karen would be the some of the first to sacrifice their youth for the hope that one day they might return home. It was these Karen that had watched their homes being burnt as they ran for their lives. It was these Karen that had seen their fathers, husbands, and sons being slaughtered so that the junta could satisfy it's blood lust. 

Thirty years have passed without much recognition by the outside world. Nobody seemed to care when the Karen were driven off their lands under military bombardment. Nobody seemed to be willing to seek peace with the reclusive regime in Myanmar. Instead the world wrote off the suffering of the Karen. We failed to recognize their needs then just as we now seek to satisfy our wants at their expense today. 

Sixty years of civil war have left many Karen internally displaced in Myanmar. For the first half of the erratic war the Karen were largely able to stay within their own homeland. Slowly they lost ground as the Burmese central government pushed it's forces into the Karen villages. Over the years the Burmese military increasingly became more brutal in it's tactics of ethic cleansing. Deploying landmines around villages, the Burmese assured their forces that the Karen civilians would not return. By attacking refugee camps the Burmese forces assured their government that the Karen would have no choice but to flee the country all together. For sixty years the Karen civilians have bore the brunt of Burma's aggression. 

The Border Consortium, “by the age of five, nearly half of all children were found to be stunted,” due to poor nutrition.

For over thirty years life in refugee camps has left the Karen in a constant state of fear and repression. They can't get the food they need to keep their children strong an healthy. They can't get the education that Burmese or Thai children get. The health care available to children in Bangkok isn't available to the Karen children. For over thirty years the life of a refugee has been all that many Karen children have known. It is the life that their parents were likely born into. It is the life that the previous generation was forced into and the legacy that they now pass on to the next generation.

Karen children grow up with parents and grandparents (if they are lucky) that bare the scars that war has placed upon their rail thin frames. People without a leg or a foot are not unusual. The war takes a little from some and everything from all. A life of constant fear of deportation. A life of persistent fear of hunger. A life where the littlest change in luck can spell disaster. Karen children grow up with all these things.

In the 80's the Burmese government stepped up it's campaign to purge the Karen from it's borders. It shelled areas where Karen civilians believed that they were at peace. Targeting the weak and vulnerable, the Burmese attempted to push the death toll upward at a rate that would crush the Karen peoples' will to fight. This blitz was meant to cripple the rebel militias. It was meant to make the civilians suffer. And by the end of the 80's both of these objectives were achieved.

For the next thirty years the Karen militias lost land at a steady rate. Civilians who had avoided the war for the first thirty years had suddenly found themselves evicted from native lands. Their homes were burnt, their land laid with landmines, and their fields laid to waste. These new victims would add to the refugees crossing into Thailand. By 2009 there would be 120,000 plus Karen refugees in camps dotted all along the border with Burma.

In 2009 the Burmese watched as Sri Lanka launched a genocidal effort to drive the Tamils out. Learning from the lack of international response, Myanmar stepped up their attacks on the Karen. By January of 2013 there would be 20 to 30 thousand more Karen pushed across the border into Thailand. Thus bringing the current estimate of Karen refugees in Thailand to 150,000 plus.

In 2011 there were 381 documented casualties from land mines, the majority of those maimed – around 200 – were civilians, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL).

Today the Karen can only boast the longest running modern day civil war, the longest running modern refugee crisis, and the largest rate of landmine deaths among civilians annually. It is at this point in time that the world should ask if this is the legacy that the Karen should be forced to pass onto their children? It is now that the world should take a look at the plight of one of the largest refugee communities (given refugee ratio to total ethnic population) on the planet and ask ourselves if this is tolerable in the modern era? Are we to accept the crippling of an entire generation due to the war crimes of government that claims to be moving toward democracy? Are we to forget the past transgressions of a regime simply because they appease our desire for liberty for all while at the same time they oppress minorities? 

President Obama once said of child soldiers; 

"It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world. Now, as a nation, we’ve long rejected such cruelty.”

And yet President Obama has done little to discuss or condemn Myanmar for it's failure to end the use of child soldiers in the Karen state. This is in spite of the fact that Burma signed an agreement with the UN in June of 2012 to end all forms of child exploitation by the military by December of 2013. We are now in June of that very year and Myanmar has failed to reach any of the initial goals or show any effort to end the practice.

Is this the legacy we want the children of the Karen people to be inheriting? Exploited by a government that has attempted for sixty years to expel their ancestors from their native lands. Used as weapons of war by a regime that seeks to cleanse it's borders of their own people. Is this the legacy that Karen children should be given while the world sets idly by?

We are investing as a nation into a regime that has committed the same atrocities we fought against in World War Two. Our government has lifted the sanctions that kept Burma from gaining meaningful income as a nation. This means that a government (which shows no change from the military junta) that targeted the Karen people for extermination and expulsion has more money to purchase weapons an equipment to complete it's end goal. This means that Thein Sein's masters in the military have more resources to draw upon as they wage war against a crippled people. Our government (and those of the EU also) have made possible the completion of the Karen peoples' holocaust. Yet we cling to promises by the Burmese government that they want to repatriate refugees from Thailand?

Where are these refugees to return to? Their villages are still pot-marked with landmines and artillery craters. Their fields still bare the scars that jet fighters left behind, not to mention any unexploded bombs or shells (live ammunition from both world wars are still found by farmers all across the world). The places they called home have often been sold off to foreign investors and local land grabbers. Resettlement only brings fear and angst to the refugees in Thailand due to a deep-seeded distrust of Myanmar's so called democratic regime.

If the next generation of Karen are to be spared the wounds of the previous generation then the history they share with Burma must be set straight. The aggressors that issued atrocities to be carried out against Karen civilians must be brought to justice. The government that oversaw the war and created the crimes it produced must be reformed till the previous leaders are no longer present. Men like Thein Sein must be made to leave the realm of relevance in Burma before the ethnic minorities have any chance at peace. Generals who profited from Karen suffering cannot be left to in a position from which they can propagate more.

This is the nature of war torn legacies. The chance for peace is only increased when the monsters who created the strife are removed. Once their legacy is removed from the forefront of the society the next generation can begin to create their own. It is only through the absence of divisive figureheads and old tyrants that the victims of tyranny can restore themselves and the world in which they once thrived.

There can be little doubt that the children of the Karen would rather live in a place they can call home. A place where their families' histories are embedded in every acre, every house, every village, and along every well worn rode. There can be little doubt that the children of the Karen would rather not live in a place where the only well worn path is that which has been formed by desperate feet of a refugee. The difference between the two worlds is the difference between a legacy and mere existence.

Want to learn more about this subject and others covered by Alder's Ledge?

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Source Documents 

(note: not all sources listed)

IntellAsia.net 

http://www.intellasia.net/burma-military-gains-on-rebels-as-villagers-flee-to-safety-106489

Irrawaddy News

http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/37235

Karen News.org

http://karennews.org/2013/06/no-way-home-yet.html/

Human Rights Watch
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/28/burma-failing-demobilize-child-soldiers 

Sevenly

Someone is trying to shed some light in this dark world. 


Recently thanks to Pinterest, I came across something.  Better than a lot of the "feel good" stuff of self improvement or crafts.  It was a T-shirt and so much more.

There is a group out there called Sevenly that is doing something worthwhile.  They team up with charities and produce designed products that an amount of the proceeds are donated to.  Here's the thing it isn't just one charity.  They do this every week.  Every week a new charity/organization is sponsored and the products specifically designed will only be sold that week. Making it a precious endorsement with a limited time offer.

But what does this have in common with Alder's Ledge?  We have similar goals and methods.  Both of us want to increase the awareness of social needs in this world and encourage people to act.  We have also used similar methods to do this.  First by asking those who have come across our information to pass it along on shared social networks of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr to spark better awareness.  Next to invite them to act on this interest and last to make a personal connection with the need.

We applaud Sevenly!  They have sponsored charities dealing with sex trafficking, refugees of genocide and civil wars, and former child soldiers.  There are other numerous organizations that span the scope of Alder's Ledge as well.  Each charity is thoroughly researched and fact checked in the application process to make sure the most good is being done.  Sevenly just started up in 2011 and have been able to raise generous amounts to different causes, each with it's own unique designed products during their campaign.  Here is how the process works as per Sevenly.org displays.

It's nice to come across others trying to do some good.  The world needs more light bearers like Sevenly to show the changes needed and what one can do about it.


sources/images: https://www.sevenly.org/

Machine Gun Preacher in Review

A for Awareness


This might be a first for alder's ledge:  a movie review. 

This author recently watched a Netflix available movie titled "Machine Gun Preacher."  It's gritty, it's rated R for a reason and it's controversial.  But it brings to the table a method to heighten awareness of the child soldiers and mistreat going on in the Sudan if not anything else. 

The movie is based on a real person and a real conflict.  As covered in previous posts- the Sudan has been in the clutches of horrific genocides and rebellions for many years.  This particular film focuses the horror tactics used by the Lord's Resistance Army in terrorizing villages and abducting children for the use of their militia.   This is currently still ongoing.  The real person- the Machine Gun Preacher- Sam Childers is a man that has created a orphanage in the Sudan through the non-profit organization Angels of East Africa he founded.  This too is still currently operating as the war continues in Sudan.

The controversy is always where the facts end and fiction begins.  The movie is "based" on his (Sam Childers' life from his book Another Man’s War: The True Story of One Man’s Battle to Save Children in the Sudan) Childers' has stated himself the movie has been a bit "hollywoodized" with minor character changes and slight time sequence differences, but overall gets the point.  There are nay-sayers and yay-sayers about this film, about this man and about this ministry.  That is not the point of this post.

This movie begins a much needed awareness to the main stream about the the issue of child soldiers and land mines being used in the world (focusing on the Sudan in this case.)  This movie also shows an audience there are means for them to do something about it.  There are ministries, reliefs, and organizations that one can donate, volunteer and participate in.  (please thoroughly research these before giving out personal information, though.) So the movie gets an A for Awareness from me.  Personally I enjoyed the film, too.


source documents:
Machine Gun Preacher
http://www.machinegunpreacher.org/features/

CP Entertainment
http://www.christianpost.com/news/machine-gun-preacher-real-life-sam-childers-more-unbelievable-55857/

Not all resources are listed