Throughout the course of history humanity has been plagued by acts of indentured servitude and slavery. Each and every shining monument of human progress was built on the backs of those less fortunate, who were forced to toil under excruciating conditions either by economic necessity or brute force. Looking at the modern world it would seem unimaginable that such archaic practices are still commonplace, but unfortunately it is true. In general it’s something we attribute to less developed countries, but the practice is kept alive by the money pumping out of the worlds’ wealthiest and most influential countries. In short, what many refer to as the western world is the heart of the problem. Are we therefore morally accountable for actions we cause in the most indirect ways? Maybe. A recent trend has emerged in conflict free products. Anything from cocoa beans to precious metals are being labeled as conflict free or ethically sourced, meaning that the workers are fairly compensated and enjoy the full protection of human rights.
Utilitarianism is a fundamental concept in moral theory. Essentially it states that an action is moral if it produces more pleasure than harm. There a number of flaws in the theory that philosophers have been debating for centuries, but the pertinent idea is how far our morality extends. For example, say you were walking down the street and saw a child being abused. It’s fairly safe to say that everyone would step in for the wellbeing of the child. It would be immoral not to. Now let’s add a degree of separation. You’re walking down the street when you hear a child crying for help and shouting for someone to call 911. Again it’s safe to say we all would. Now what if your friend told you they knew that a child who lived down the street was being abused? It’s more complicated due to the time and physical distance, but hopefully we would all feel the moral obligation to act. What is the extent of our moral duties though? If we know that children are being abused thousands of miles away, do we have an obligation to act? That’s something we each have to determine for ourselves. However our position grows more complicated. Let’s say you’re at the store buying coffee beans, and remember a news story about how the company had been forcing children to work twenty hour days processing the beans. It isn’t a stretch to see how buying that product allows the company to grow and in turn need a larger labor force. Obviously you don’t bear the moral burden that the company does, but are we responsible as consumers to choose products that are ethically sourced? The crux of the matter is practicality versus morality. In an ideal world none of this would happen, but it is impossible to avoid contributing to the cycle. This is merely a disturbing part of the social contract we have entered into as members of society. It’s something we were born into and were lucky enough to end up where we are. Unfortunately, the opposite applies to those who suffer from the backlash.
Now that the moral question is better understood, we’re still left with figuring out what’s going on and more importantly why. As sad as it may be we already know the answer to the second question. Profit. While companies claim to be against practices such as indentured servitude and slavery, they can’t operate without them. One of the best examples is with cocoa beans in Western Africa, specifically Ghana and the Ivory Coast. According to Fortune roughly 70% of the world’s chocolate comes from beans grown in those two countries. Both countries as well as their neighbors are impoverished and there simply isn’t enough money to go around. It has become commonplace for human traffickers to kidnap young men and women from bordering countries and sell them to cocoa plantations as slaves. Some are forced to work there because there simply isn’t any other option. As the chocolate industry has grown with time, so has the number of slaves. Men, women, and children are forced to work in dangerous conditions for extended periods of time. Younger and lighter children are often tasked with climbing the trees to cut down the large pods containing the cocoa beans with machetes, older and stronger teenagers are tasked with carrying bags ranging from twenty five to over a hundred pounds, and people of all ages use machetes to cut open the tough pods and harvest the beans inside. The work is dangerous and most people have the scars to prove it. The rest of the world hasn’t completely ignored the problem, however the efforts to fix it have been largely unsuccessful. International labor laws have been passed and countries like the United States and France have cracked down on companies as well as attempting to aid programs that keep kids in school rather than the fields.
While the latest graphic accounts of conflict are generated from the chocolate industry, it’s simply a drop in the sea of mass consumerism. There is a growing demand for luxury items that needs a growing workforce to support it. Mining is a particularly brutal field, the work is dangerous and has a relatively low yield for time put in. The years of the “blood diamond” campaign seem to have become a distant and disturbing memory, however even after multiple attempts by international organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank, the same problems persist. In fact, some believe the efforts to help, have harmed the already struggling workers. In 2010 the Dodd Frank Wall Street and Consumer Protection Act was passed in response the growing conflicts in the Congo. It requires companies to report where their resources are from. If they come from a conflict region the companies become responsible for ensuring the workers are well treated. Four “conflict minerals”, gold, tantalum, tin, and tungsten, are used to produce electronics. It was revealed that the profit of these mines wasn’t going to the workers, but rather to finance extremist organizations. One disturbing article published in Al Jazeera relates the interview of a sixteen year old miner. People working in the mines are seen as disposable. When an inevitable cave in occurs there is no attempt made to help the men trapped inside, it’s cheaper just to higher someone else and there’s no shortage of people looking for work. This is what makes the Dodd Frank Act and other programs a double edged sword. Time magazine published an article telling the story of Mwanza, a fifteen year old diamond miner. The mines are the only source of work in his village. If he doesn’t mine, he doesn’t eat. Actually, that creates a false impression. Mwanza is only paid when he finds one of the precious stones. In the meantime he becomes indebted to the company for the food and medicine they provide. When the mines are closed for humanitarian reasons, the entire village suffers from the lack of work and conditions become worse for the miners’ families.
The Dodd Frank act has received heavy criticism and was suspended by the SEC in April of 2017. The biggest complaint seemed to be that the law didn’t actually do anything other create a costly catalogue of where the problem was the worst. It also failed in its’ intended purpose, although the blame for this falls on the companies themselves. The Harvard Business Review reported that in 2016 only one percent of companies were able to guarantee their products used conflict free sources. Nineteen percent stated they had no reason to believe the minerals weren’t conflict free, but the other eighty percent admitted to having no idea. Notably, not a single company stated their products came from conflict areas, but surely that’s coincidental, right? This begs the question, how many of the eighty percent is doing so knowingly, but failing to report it to save a few bucks. The other explanation follows a long maze like path back to the violence used to produce it. The company may get the end product from factory A, who in turn got the processed material from refinery B, who got it from mine C. The list of suppliers gets muddied, especially when you only deal with the people selling the end product.
Overall, this article portrays the world in one of its’ most negative lights. We know there is a moral problem, but culpability or even a lesser degree of responsibility is difficult. While the products we buy fuels the industries that create the root of the problem, it’s impossible for our world to function without them. If you decide not to drive because the oil money is fueling terrorism how will you get around? You could take a bus, but they still use gas. Maybe instead of forgoing driving you spend the money to buy an electric car, but what of the precious metals used to make it? Ok so no vehicles, but walking is good for the body and the environment. Are you wearing clothes? Clothes produced in abismal factories, where workers earn less per day then I spend on my morning coffee? While the examples may be extreme, they represent the scale of the crisis we’re facing. We have a moral responsibility to solve this issue, not because we might hold some infinitesimal factor of blame, but because we owe it those who are needlessly suffering. However, in the end every article and every interview researched for this article leads to one conclusion. These problems don’t cause poverty, but are caused because of poverty. The attempts to aid workers by closing mines or factories have failed simply because good intentions can’t fill their stomachs or heal their sick. By depriving them of their livelihood, we make them desperate. Desperate enough to risk working on a plantation where they fall to their deaths climbing a tree to get a cocoa pod. It means they’re desperate enough to work in a mine, knowing their life is only worth what they make an hour, that if a cave in occured they would be left to die slowly rather than risk losing profit by spending the time and resources to dig them out. While this article focuses on conflict free products, it exposes a much deeper issue in the fundamentals of how society is organized. However, the importance of the movement for conflict free products remains strong. By understanding this top level issue, we’ll slowly be able to work towards the changes needed to right our many wrongs.
Usually, this is where the citations appear. However, I wanted to briefly highlight the people who make this article important. Informative pieces often focus too much on the abstract concepts and forget why the story needs to be told. The ages of these people will be posted as how old they were when interviewed.
- Ibrahim Traore, 15 years old. Ibrahim works on a cocoa plantation in the Ivory Coast. He wasn’t able to talk long before having to rejoin his work group, but we do know this. His family moved to the Ivory Coast from Mali when he was young. He has never been to school, when children are old enough for school, they’re also seen as old enough to work. Ibrahim wishes to go to school and when asked about the work only said that it was “very hard”.
- Mwanza, 15 years old. Mwanza works at a diamond mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He has since he was twelve years old. His mother abandoned him to care for his father who’s blind. It had been three months since Mwanza had last found a diamond. Until he finds another diamond, he will continue to take on debt to feed himself and his father, and to provide his father with medicine.
- Papa Mukendi, age unknown. Mukendi is a carpenter in Goma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Specifically since 1998, he specializes in making colored coffins. Since the war has been waging Mukendi states that nearly all of the carpenters he knows have become coffin makers. In a good week he’ll sell three coffins. In his town, it has become more profitable for a carpenter to sell coffins then furniture.
- Faida, age unknown. Faida also lives in Goma. Before the war she use to make a living selling handmade crafts. Now she is prostitute for the soldiers will occupy the town. It’s the only way for her to support her two children. Faida is part of group of nearly 7,500 women who all work as prostitutes. They try to give each other advice on how to keep safe, and more importantly how to return home with their money safely. It is common practice for groups of men to wait around popular sites for prostitution. When women like Faida are going home, they strike. They take the money before beating and raping the woman, and leaving her in the street. When asked how many times this has happened to her, she had lost count. She just said it has happened many times.
- Inocene, 16 years old. Inocene works a miner in Rubaya, a town close to Goma. He mines for the four conflict metals. He talks about cave ins, and how the victims are left for dead. He also recounts multiple times when miners have gone back over areas only to recover the skeletal remains of people who had fell from the shaft or become trapped.
Sources:
- Ayogu, M., & Lewis, Z. (2016, July 28). Conflict Minerals: An Assessment of the Dodd-Frank Act. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/conflict-minerals-an-assessment-of-the-dodd-frank-act/
- Baker, A. (n.d.). Blood Diamonds. Retrieved from http://time.com/blood-diamonds/
- Blanco, A. R. (2016, January 19). Blood and minerals: Who profits from conflict in DRC? Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/01/blood-minerals-profits-conflict-drc-160118124123342.html
- Davis, Y. H. (2017, February 17). 80% of Companies Don’t Know If Their Products Contain Conflict Minerals. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2017/01/80-of-companies-dont-know-if-their-products-contain-conflict-minerals
- Lopez, E., & Burt, A. (2017, April 11). SEC suspends conflict mineral rule enforcement. Retrieved from https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/SEC-conflict-mineral-rule-dodd-frank-enforcement/440175/
- O’Keefe, B. (2016, March 1). Inside Big Chocolate’s Child Labor Problem. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/big-chocolate-child-labor/
- The Enough Project Team. (n.d.). Progress and Challenges on Conflict Minerals: Facts on Dodd-Frank 1502. Retrieved from https://enoughproject.org/special-topics/progress-and-challenges-conflict-minerals-facts-dodd-frank-1502
- Worstall, T. (2017, February 09). Trump’s Executive Order To Repeal The Worst Law Of The Year. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/02/09/trumps-xo-to-repeal-the-worst-law-of-the-year-section-1502-of-dodd-frank-on-conflict-minerals/#dfe71d447f55