In our rapidly changing global economic landscape, globalization has become a household “buzzword” and the components of the latest wave of globalization include increased mobility of capital, declining transportation costs, increased communications and technologies availability. Another major thrust behind globalization is the dismantling of trade and investment barriers to increase economic growth and reduce poverty. Some schools of thought think that economic growth and market liberalization is essential to poverty reduction and can be seen by the way the World Bank’s loan conditions are formulated, how the International Monetary Fund provides policy advice and how many World Trade Organization agreements are made. As globalization evolves, so does the need for policy establishment and revision as multinational corporations are investing and conducting business in nations that have historically been domestic in nature or are considered a Less Developed Country. In other words, countries are moving away, and in some ways, forced, from a classical nationalistic economic model to a modern global economic system where the countries/economies involved are increasingly dependent on one another and right now for many countries the social costs are far outweighing the benefits. Globalization is perceived to be extremely efficient from a macroeconomic viewpoint and eventually benefits everyone in the model. That being said, there are many external pressures restricting how it is operationalized. These external pressures include but are not limited to, import/export taxes, various aspects and levels of corruption and for the topic being discussed in this paper is the ethical and social impacts relating to the labour component of globalization and the policy issues leading to the exploitation of people including human trafficking and forced child labour.
The United Nations has come to a consensus definition of Human Trafficking and can be found in Article 3 of the ‘Palermo Protocol’ effective December 25, 2003 and this internationally agreed definition is as follows: ““Trafficking in persons” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs;
(b) The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) have been used;
(c) The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered “trafficking in persons” even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article;
(d) “Child” shall mean any person under eighteen years of age.”
In summary, the definition focuses on exploitation of human beings – be it for sexual exploitation, other forms of forced labour, slavery, servitude, or for the removal of human organs. Trafficking takes place by criminal means through the threat or use of force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of positions of power or abuse of positions of vulnerability. It relates to all stages of the trafficking process: recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons. Trafficking is not just a transnational crime across international borders – the definition applies to internal domestic trafficking of human beings.
To understand why people are trafficked we must first evaluate the economic landscape of nations more frequently involved in trafficking activities. Typically people of trafficked nations have the same characteristics, high poverty rates, low literacy levels, lack of proper educational facilities and programs over-population, and natural calamities such as earthquakes and floods where disaster response plans are poorly executed or absent. An example of this was an earthquake in Pakistan in 2005 where numerous families were displaced and children were expected to work and/or were forced to work to restore the families’ quality of life. One of the other reasons why trafficking occurs is simply the basic supply demand principle, which is unfortunate, but if we isolate and discuss LDC’s, they typically have an abundance of labour resources available (both ethical and unethical, legal and illegal) that some multinational corporations and transnational organized crime cartels have identified and some are choosing to utilize no matter how the labour is sourced. Trafficking of humans is a highly discussed issue and one of the reasons why is because it is difficult to identify illegal trafficking movements is that domestic immigration laws and policies that regulate the number of non-citizens that can enter a country often conflict with international human rights laws applicable to migration as published by the United Nations. Additionally, domestic authorities often confuse smuggling with trafficking and do not see the person being trafficked as a victim of a crime and more often than not, the victim is left helpless and completely vulnerable. That being said, trafficking also occurs within a country (inter-provincial) and a solid example is China. As many as ten to twenty thousand documented victims per year are trafficked and the majority are from rural areas, are uneducated, are impoverished people and frequently trafficked into metropolitan areas to meet the rapid economic development as production demands of the global economy continually increase.
Major initiatives such as the International Labour Organizations Declaration of Social Justice may prove to be a definitive step in the right direction if accepted by governments and written into national and regional labour policies. Other initiatives include the U.N. Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and the ILO document Minimum Estimate of Forced Labour in the World, which in summary lists various conditions where terrorism can occur and oddly enough, many of them echo the conditions for trafficking. They include, “prolonged unresolved conflicts, dehumanisation of victims of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, lack of the rule of law and violations of human rights, ethnic, national and religious discrimination, political exclusion, socio-economic marginalisation and lack of good governance.” The links between globalization and human trafficking are present, but until appropriate policies are put into effect that affect all areas of globalization including, MNC’s, World Bank and engaged nations the trend will continue. When dollar signs alter vision and as people succumb to greed, sometimes and as unfortunate as it is, the price is dehumanizing a fellow person. We will continue to pay this price until each cog in the chain can identify their social responsibilities or be forcefully led into that responsibility. Trafficking will continue as long as profits continue and in order for the trend to reverse, we need to see an increase in political commitment and judicial mechanisms to implement and govern these suggested policy creations and reforms.
Although forced labour can be a part of the human trafficking issue, it is worth discussing by itself, as many people forced into work situations have not been trafficked. Forced Labour has many shapes and forms but the definition adopted in 1930 by ILO Convention No. 29 is, “forced or compulsory labour as all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”. A study was conducted by the ILO and its partners and was published in the Director General’s 2005 Global Report called A Global Alliance against Forced Labour.Conservative estimates were that 12.3 million people were forced into labour globally which equates to four out of one thousand people are in a forced labour situation. These results do not include countries where statistics are not available. This could be due to incomplete birth records, corrupt government officials and lack of co-operation in the study. Of the 12.3 million, 64% of the total count can be attributed to economic exploitation with many of those people, especially children involved in the cocoa, cotton and rubber industries as per Tim Newman during CBC’s “As It Happens” who is the campaign director for the workers' advocacy group, the International Labour Rights Forum in Washington, D.C. Other products/industries commonly seen to exploit children are sugar cane, tobacco, coffee, rice, bricks, garments, carpets, footwear, gold and coal. For example, the cocoa industry has been under scrutiny for some time and recently a corporate executive Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe for Nestle, SA responded to child exploitation by saying, “It’s a very fine edge. You cannot say that no child can work in a rural environment. That is almost impossible. What we try to ensure is that they have access to schooling.” Although this statement is very diplomatic and encouraging it does not hold anyone truly accountable for ensuring these children are not forced into this type of labour. In addition, a report done by the ILO, which is a specialized department of the United Nations, identified two hundred thousand children under the age of eighteen were being exploited, specifically in the cocoa industry in South Africa. We have evidence that in many of the worst offending countries, minimum labour policies have been created, but the enforcement is in many cases absent. For example, in Burkina Faso, 51% of children ages 10-14 are thrust into the exploitative labour environments even though labour laws specifically identify the minimum age as 14. This may be attributed to government implementation and once again, commitment levels to execute, global demand for produced goods, but also is a symptom of poverty levels and education levels of affected nations.
Over the past 90 years both UNICEF and ILO have been addressing these issues and are trying to eliminate child labour that is exploitative in nature, by signing at least 20 International Treaties against child labour. There has also been various United Nations (ILO) conventions dating as far back as 1919 specifically addressing child and human rights, but these issues continue their prevalence as one of the black sheep of the globalization movement. Although there are many other signs of progress, specifically addressing labour issues, governments and trade organizations in general are failing.
In order to try to eliminate labour exploitation in relation to globalization, responsibility needs to occur at a different level. For example, in 2001, in the cocoa industry, representatives signed an agreement; the Harkin-Engle Protocol trying to eliminate the worst forms of child labour exploitation in West Africa. The two key initiatives included:
- Development of a “public certification” system for cocoa farming – a credible, mutually acceptable, voluntary process which would give a public accounting of labor practices in cocoa farming. The certification system has been developed.
- A commitment to establish a joint international foundation to serve as a clearinghouse on best practices to eliminate child labor and drive remediation efforts on the ground. The foundation has been formed and is called the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI).
This protocol is unquestionably a step in the right direction. Many industries should use this as example of how to reduce the negative effects of labour exploitations, but on the other hand, we need to look at this issue from a different perspective and account for the consumer point of view.
As we are aware, consumers dictate the demand for a given product and can control the allocation of funds. In other words, in a globalized market consumers get to decide where, what and how much we buy. Coupled with the availability of information regarding MNC’s and their operating activities and documented information regarding labour exploitations from various international bodies, it should be in part of a new global social reformation that puts a face on globalization. The consumer group needs to become more educated about the products and services procured and put some morality back into business. For example, in the cocoa industry procurement of cocoa beans for production of chocolate can now be certified to be child labour free. In turn, in order to start eliminating these kinds of issues, consumers should be purchasing this type of product explicitly. The demand therefore would increase for this type and product and the bodies facilitating forced labour would eventually run out of money and slowly be passed over leaving the ethical and credible companies. Additionally, the consumer group at this point needs to acknowledge that people providing the labour in other countries are still people with rights and should be treated as such. This is great in theory but until the consumer groups recognizes part of globalization is also fair trade and our Hershey chocolate bar in an fair globalized world might just be more expensive.
In conclusion, both human trafficking and forced labour are visible scars on globalization and policy deficiencies are apparent. Efforts are being made in numerous ways such as UN protocols and conventions, UNICEF suggestions, national labour laws and policies, and World Bank loan criterion, but at this point, it really does not matter how many more laws and policies are introduced because if the consumer still buys and the policies remain unenforceable because of the lack of commitment at local and national levels, the whole system is circumvented. One of the major reasons for these two globalization issues affecting impoverished LDC ‘s more than developed countries is because part of the most recent wave of globalization is labour capital. The formation and utilization of labour is now being heavily studied and examined. Consumers if they don’t already know hold the key, but if we cannot communicate and send a message as consumers that as a body we only want to procure goods and services from ethical and socially responsible companies the theory that globalization can benefits everyone will never be realized.
