To Find the Causes of Child Trafficking, Look In Your Shopping Cart
The issue of child trafficking is dominating social media; but the truth lies closer to home than the conspiracy theorists would have you believe.
Warning: this article contains content relating to the abuse and exploitation of children.
You would have to be hiding under a rock to have missed the current trend sweeping across social media. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are awash with posts claiming an elite cabal of politicians, celebrities and billionaires have been revealed to be trafficking children around the world for use in ritualistic torture, sexual abuse and murder. According to many, Trump is leading the charge in “draining the swamp”, with operations under way (including apparently in locked-down Melbourne) to retrieve the victims of trafficking from or through secret underground tunnels. Lists of high profile names have been released, claiming high-profile individuals have been arrested, are awaiting trial, or have been executed for their crimes against children; some posts even go so far as to claim that the “deep state” has replaced these individuals with robots and simulations so everything appears to be business as usual. All of these claims stem from QAnon, and none of them can be verified.
Sadly, child trafficking is a real issue in the world. And it has long been known that there are some members of elite communities who can and will use their money and power to abuse, assault and exploit vulnerable people. This is not new, nor is it a secret. But the current spate of outlandish conspiracy theories sweeping across the Internet are successfully obscuring the fact that child trafficking is a real and ongoing issue, and that we are all to some degree complicit through our daily consumer behaviours. To learn the truth of child trafficking, we would do better to look to our shopping carts than to claims of secret networks of tunnels under the ground.
Chocolate: 70% of the global supply of cocoa is sourced from West Africa, predominately Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Consumer demand for cheap chocolate drives down cocoa prices; producers are paid as little as $2 a day, creating an environment that supports the trafficking of children for labour on farms. Children as young as five have been documented on cocoa farms, often working 12 hours a day for no pay, in dangerous conditions. They are deprived of access to education, to their families, and of their freedom. Around 2 million children have been trafficked as slave labour for the production of chocolate, on farms that supply corporations such as Nestle, Mars and Hershey’s.
Coffee: Like chocolate, the Western demand for cheap coffee products has created farming environments that support child trafficking for forced labour. Starbucks was exposed in 2020 for sourcing coffee from plantations known to use child labour, and in 2016 Nestle admitted they were unable to guarantee their supply chain was free from “forced labour practices or human rights abuses.”
Clothing: Trafficked children are present in sweatshops throughout the world including India, China, and South America, producing cheap textiles and goods for the export market; like all children held as forced labour they receive little to no pay, work long hours and in unsafe conditions. It is estimated that at least 100 000 children work in illegal sweatshops in Delhi, and at least half a million children (predominantly girls) labour on cotton-seed farms. Australian companies including Kmart, Cotton On and Big W have all been revealed to rely upon sweatshops for the manufacture of their clothing, and have received criticism for not doing enough to guarantee a living wage or safe working conditions for workers, many of whom are children.
Beef: Forced child labour has been documented in beef production in Chad, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Mauritania, Namibia, Uganda, and Zambia, as well as Paraguay and Brazil. Cheap beef is exported from these countries all around the world, including to Australia. Researchers on forced child labour in Bolivian cattle production found workers including children were subjected to “the threat of physical violence, sexual violence, and loss of social status, as well as excessive working hours, lack of days off, sub-minimum wages, hazards to worker health, and child labour.” Boys from Angola are frequently trafficked into Namibia for forced labour in cattle herding, removed from their communities and families as a deliberate method of isolating children and preventing their escape.
Technology: Cobalt is an essential mineral for both cars and technology such as smart phones, used in the creation of lithium-ion batteries. A 2018 investigation by CNN found that child labour was being utilised in the mining of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which produces over half of the world’s cobalt supplies. Miners are at risk of fatal accidents and long-term health damage; reports included interviews with orphan children whose foster-families had sent them to labour in the mines rather than attending school. There are no initiatives or laws in place to guarantee traceability as a means to prevent the trafficking of children in the supply chain.
These are just five areas of production that have demonstrable reliance upon child trafficking and forced labour. It is important to note here that whilst the phrase “child trafficking” conjures up horrific images of abductions and arduous cross-border journeys, there are variances and nuances that must be acknowledged to fully understand the subject. Child trafficking can involve abduction, as well as coercion, the promise of education and opportunity that never eventuates, indebted bondage, or family (including parents) selling or abusing children for money, or forcing them into labour. Child trafficking can also involve forcing children to become soldiers in conflicts. And whilst child trafficking does often involve physical movement across regions, this is not always the case.
Most attention on child trafficking centres those who have been forced into sexual exploitation; the current QAnon conspiracies that are so prominent of late predominantly feature depictions or descriptions of white children, and their alleged white “saviours,” most notably Trump. There has been little to no inclusion in the discourse of those BIPOC children who have been forced into labour and subjected to horrific abuses in order to produce many items that are regarded as staples of the Western lifestyle. This is not to be wondered at; QAnon as a source for these conspiracy theories is deeply rooted in white supremacy and is successfully manipulating the dialogue of child trafficking to gain traction for their ideologies.
Child trafficking for sexual or labour exploitation is undeniably real. We have an obligation to those children (as well as adults) who are victims of trafficking to hold corporations to account, to demand action from governments, to question our own culpability, and to recognise the true face of child trafficking as a means to support the Western lifestyle. Industrialised child trafficking and forced labour is to a significant extent a symptom of the West’s demands for free market access and cheap consumables. Whilst we continue to allow the promotion of outlandish viral claims that are factually unproven and rooted in white supremacy, and whilst we allow ourselves to be distracted from analysing our own roles in this ongoing atrocity, a majority of trafficking victims around the world will continue to go unseen and unheard.
www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/01/child-labour-behind-smart-phone-and-electric-car-batteries/
www.verite.org/project/cattle-2/
www.crs.org/stories/stop-human-trafficking
https://freedomandcitizenship.colombia.edu/human-meat-market
www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods
www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/oct/12/phone-misery-children-congo-cobalt-mines-drc
https://safeasiafoundation.org/2017/09/20/forced-labor-child-trafficking-indias-garment-sector/
www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/child-slavery
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-nothing-can-stop-what-is-coming/610567/
