Zambia’s Chinese-owned copper mines have come under scrutiny recently from Human Rights Watch, due to their unsafe working conditions and apparent disregard for workers’ rights. To make matters worse, those who join unions or complain about safety face intimidation and job insecurity:

Miners in companies run by the Chinese or other multinationals also described retaliation against outspoken union representatives, including docked pay or refusal to renew their contracts.

Copper is Zambia’s biggest export.

Read more here

(photo: mm-j)

Today the Swedish media reported that more than 200 workers producing H&M garments in Cambodia fainted, after anti-cockroach chemicals were used in their factory.

The full report can be found here (in Swedish).

Of course, many of us have heard how the iPad will revolutionise our lives, how it will make things more convenient and how we’ll go for days without needing to turn on our computers. What many of us hadn’t heard about, until the report in today’s Observer, are the conditions under which these wonders of technology are produced.

According to the report, two NGOs have been in the process of interviewing staff at Foxconn, the leading producer of iPads, and have received consistent reports of excessive overtime, ritual humiliation and “anti-suicide contracts”:

“The dormitories where she and most others live offer little comfort. Up to 24 people can share one room and the rules are strict, even prohibiting the use of a kettle or a hairdryer…

Many workers interviewed claimed that they were regularly required to work far in excess of the 36 hours of overtime per month that Chinese law – and therefore international labour law – permits…One worker produced a payslip showing 98 hours of extra time in a single month – nearly three times the legal maximum and in breach of Apple’s own code of conduct.

The rule that employees should have one day off in seven is often flouted…”

This is a wake up call to many of us who enjoy using Apple products, and find it easy to forget the very real human consequences of our global economy. One person’s item of cheap technology usually costs someone, somewhere, a far greater price.

Read the full report here.

(Photo: Bark)

Iran has long been known as a volatile state, prone to violent authoritarian activity that continuously threatens the security of its inhabitants. Telephone calls in Iran are carefully monitored by government security agencies: the slightest whiff of a political discussion and your conversation is hastily disconnected.

While most of the world stands by, aghast that freedom of speech can be so flippantly disregarded, there are companies who are looking for opportunities to turn it in their favour, to make a profit at the expense of those without a voice.

Once such company is Nokia Siemens who, it is alleged, have assisted the Iranian Government in setting up a state of the art surveillance system with which they can monitor the use of fixed lines, mobile phones and text messaging within the country. According to their 2009 sustainability report:

…Nokia Siemens Networks provided a monitoring center to allow Iranian law enforcement authorities to implement the Lawful Interception capability in MCI’s mobile network…

Iranian Human Rights Campaigner Isa Saharkhiz is bringing a case before the US Federal Court which, if successful, will call Nokia Siemens to account for their actions, and to use their government connections to call for Saharkhiz’ release from custody.

Saharkhiz was arrested, with the help of this technology, because of his support for the opposition leader, Mehdi Karroubi. Amnesty International have commented that they:

“…[consider] him to be a prisoner of conscience, held solely on account of the peaceful expression of his views, including regarding the outcome of the election and is at risk of torture or other ill-treatment.”

Sources: Zdnet, The Guardian, Google News.

According to CNN, traffickers are taking advantage of the current instability in Haiti to take children and organs out of the country. Many children have been orphaned and the massive displacement of people, in makeshift dwellings, make them extremely vulnerable:

Haiti is trying to locate displaced children and register them so they can either be reunited with other family members or put up for adoption, Bellerive said.
But, he said, illegal child trafficking is “one of the biggest problems that we have.”
Many groups appear to be legitimate, “but a lot of organizations — they come and they say there were children on the streets. They’re going to bring them to the [United] States,” he said.

(source: CNN.com and @STOPTHETRAFFIK, photo: United Nations)

It’s a disturbing thought that a market established on the dreams and imaginations of children could be profiting from the widespread use of sweatshops and unsafe working environments. According to Tim Hunt, of Ethical Consumer Magazine, this is today’s reality and ethically conscientious manufacturers are in the minority:

Up to 80% of the world’s toys are made in China, where human rights are often overlooked. The report “Nightmare on Sesame Street” by the US-based National Labour Committee last year highlighted many of these problems.

It found that in the Kai Da factory in Shenzhen city, which supplies Hasbro, a hundred 16-year-old high-school children and several younger children were working. Conditions in the factory were said to be dangerous, with potentially toxic solvents and paints routinely handled by workers with only rudimentary protective gear. Shifts were allegedly routinely over 12 hours long, seven days a week, with no days off for many months, plus mandatory 19- and 23-hour shifts at busy times such as the pre-Christmas rush.

(Source: The Guardian Online, Image: Katherine)

Rowan Williams, The Archbishop of Canterbury, has been directing attention recently to environmental issues and our responsibility to reduce our ‘footprint.’ One of his suggestions (in a recent interview with The Times) could take a serious toll on the livelihood of many African farmers:

He said that the carbon footprint of peas from Kenya and other airfreighted food was too high and families should not assume that all types of food would be available through the year.

As James MacGregor points out in The Guardian today:

Stopping this trade would make hardly any impact on climate change but would harm over one million people in sub-Saharan Africa who depend on it for their livelihoods, and to pay for healthcare and the education of their children, girls in particular.

He adds that:

Air-freighted fruit and vegetables contribute less than one-tenth of one percent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.

This is one of the great tensions between international development and environmental sustainability.

It’s no recent news, but the EU, China and the USA provide their farmers with subsidies which allow them to compete in a world market. These subsidies mean that the farmers can charge far less for their produce than they are actually worth. Any surpluses are then dumped on developing markets at a much lower price than local farmers can afford.

Are we to continue with these structural injustices and at the same time cut back on consumer spending on African produce?

(Source: The Guardian Online, The Times. Image: Steve Punter)

The Guardian reports on the current state of life in Southern Sudan. While the SPLA are said to be disarming, peace is threatened from all sides by poverty, disease, interference from neighbouring territories, and the arrival of Uganda’s LRA. People are displaced and children are stolen and traded as commodities:

“We were coming home from school when some men came out of the bushes in torn clothes. They were calling and offering us soda. We were very scared so we ran,” said Susan Achan, 12.
Last month two of her friends were not so lucky. “We were picking mangoes,” said Sebit Quintino, 13. “We saw the men, they were Murle tribe, and we shouted to each other and ran, but three were playing in the water and didn’t hear. One of the boys turned up days later after managing to escape; the other two have never been seen again.”
The boys are traded for cattle and made to work, and the girls are also sold off for a dowry of cows.

(Source: The Guardian Online. Image: Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters)

This is the first in a series of micro enterprise profiles on makethingsfair.com. We want to make people aware not only of the progress of the consumer giants, but also of the people who are engaging with specific communities and harnessing their energies in creative and transforming ways.

It might seem hard to believe, but there is some good news coming out of Iraq. Buy Shoes. Save Lives. have joined forces with families in the North to make their traditional, hand crafted shoes available to a wider audience. Founder, Jeremy Courtney was interviewed in Relevant Magazine:

The full name is klashi kurdi. They’re made locally [in Northern Iraq] by Kurds. By one shoemaker’s account, they’ve been around since 600 B.C. Whether you believe that or not, they’re definitely legendary in this part of the world. It takes at least 35 hours to make one pair…we can introduce you by name to the people who make our shoes. I love the idea of seeing families apprenticed in this trade. It’s beautiful.

The company is ‘fair trade’ in its simplest form: workers get a fair and much needed income, while extra profits are invested in funding heart surgery for Iraqi children:

Klash and Kids Klash are not made in anonymous factories or sweat shops. We do not have relationships with grizzly foremen to the exclusion of the actual labor force. We meet with the shoemakers themselves, know their names, know their families, eat lunch with them and treat them with as much respect as we desire for ourselves.

To order your pair, click here.

(source: The Preemptive Love Coalition, Relevant Magazine)

British supermarket Sainsbury’s will begin stocking Fair Trade Coffee produced in the Congo, according to a recent article on The Guardian website. Coffee smuggling between the DRC and Rwanda is responsible for a huge number of deaths each year:

Most coffee from this part of DRC is smuggled across the lake to Rwanda at night. Official figures report that a thousand people drown each year in the process.

It is hoped that contracts like this will offer farmers from conflict zones a safer alternative.

(source: The Guardian, photo: hdptcar)