Sarah J spoke with Jo Hill about people trafficking and chocolate

Jo Hill

With summer fast approaching many of us will be thinking of holidays and travelling; however, some people don't get to travel by choice. Some people are forced to travel and work in other countries or places and aren't paid for their work. This is referred to as the modern day 'slave trade' or 'people trafficking'. Sarah J got in touch with Jo Hill, a local campaigner for STOP THE TRAFFIK, to find out more and was surprised to hear how even chocolate can have ingredients that have been through trafficked hands!

Sarah: Cross Rhythms users may know very little about STOP THE TRAFFIK; tell us a little bit about it.

Jo: Ok. Well STOP THE TRAFFIK is a global movement that was founded in 2006 by Reverend Steve Chalke and Phil Lane. They're a campaigning coalition of over a thousand groups and NGOs and businesses, and they work in solidarity with grassroots movements all over the world from those most at risk to countries where victims are likely to end up

Sarah: So what is 'trafficking'? 'Cause some people will be like, what does that mean?

Jo: Well, basically human trafficking means to be moved / taken somewhere after being tricked, forced or coerced into a situation of exploitation. Being moved can be across borders or just to a different part of the same city / country. People can be trafficked for various different purposes; including sexual exploitation, forced labour, child benefit fraud, forced marriages and so on.

Sarah: So it's really the modern day slave trade of moving people and those individuals then becoming slaves to whatever their owner wants to use them for?

Jo: Exactly, yes that exactly.

Sarah: It's quite shocking really isn't it in terms of historically we read about the slave trade and we think yeah I'm glad that that finished. But actually the reality is it hasn't finished at all.

Jo: Definitely. The reality is that twenty seven million people are currently enslaved around the world today in various forms including trafficking.

Sarah: That's a massive number of people. I guess that's an estimate as well and there's probably a lot more?

Jo: That's exactly it.

Sarah: Now you've mentioned that there's various forms of what people may then end up being engaged in once they've been sold on to someone, whether it's prostitution, or whether it's working in factories and whether it's a whole heap of other things as well. Have you got any idea what percentages of people have been trafficked to different places?

Jo: I haven't got specific percentages in terms of where different amounts of people have been taken (80% of those trafficked are women and it is estimated that 79% of these end up in sex industry. 50% of victims are children). I have percentages for example that one person is trafficked internationally every minute, in context that means in one 9-5 day four hundred and eighty people have been trafficked.

Sarah: Oh wow, that's shocking isn't it? That's a huge amount of people. I can see why lots of people are passionate about this topic. A lot of previous things that have gone out on the Community Choice radio programme I present, that mention things about trafficking, have been very much related to prostitution. That's had a lot of press releases sent out about it. I guess what's had less press attention is this idea of ending up involving people in factory work and stuff like that. Tell us a bit more about that.

Jo: Well fixing on the current campaign - the current STOP THE TRAFFIK campaign - March on Mars. This is aimed at persuading Mars to become traffik free, which Cadbury's Dairy Milk incidentally will do this summer. So traffik free will mean that the cocoa plantations which children are working on in the west coast of Africa, that's Côte d'Ivoire or the Ivory Coast where over a third of the worlds chocolate comes from, they would be traffik free. So Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate is going traffik free, which would mean there would be no 'worst forms of child labour' (which includes trafficking and slavery) involved in the production of the chocolate. The focus is now on Mars to persuade them to do the same, which would be a really positive move for Mars.

Sarah: So this is quite shocking really in terms of the Fair-trade agenda, most people have got an idea that it's good to buy Fair-trade chocolate 'cause at least then the people that are trading their goods get a decent deal out of it. But it sounds from what you're saying that there are actually companies within the UK that could well be using people that have been trafficked?

Jo: The problem is that a lot of these major chocolate companies buy their cocoa beans from what you would call the middle men who've bought them from various cocoa farms where they could be using trafficked labour. These beans will then be mixed up with other beans so it's not clear where the traffik beans are.

Sarah: You've already given us some shocking statistics Jo about how many people are trafficked. We're now particularly looking at the chocolate industry and the campaign around that and trying to encourage organisations here within the UK to make sure that the cocoa beans that they end up having are traffic free. Have you got some statistics in terms of how many people would be trafficked into that particular industry?

Jo: Thousands of children working on the cocoa farms of West Africa have been trafficked. So that's quite a shocking figure to begin with. Then you hear sixty four percent of those working on the cocoa farms are under the age of sixteen. Which again is very shocking.

Sarah: Would we have any idea within that - you said that they're under sixteen so they're definitely children. Would they be as young as like four years?

Jo: Other reports have stated many of them are under twelve.

Sarah: It kind of makes me ponder about eating chocolate right now. You've mentioned that Cadbury's is just about to become traffik free. How do they do that?

Jo: It's a case of closer monitoring of their supply chain.. There are various different ways they can go about this. There is the UTZ, which would ensure independent checks on cocoa farms were carried out. That's an initiative that Mars and various others are involved in at the moment. But this is not intensive enough process to ensure chocolate is completely traffik free.

Sarah: So in terms of other companies in the UK that still haven't signed up to this; how can people in the UK respond to that? You've mentioned that STOP THE TRAFFIK have presently got a campaign about it. How could we connect with that?

Jo: Well I think it's important to use your consumer power. There is currently a card that can be signed or to phone Mars and tell them that you're not happy about their practices. So basically finding out where your favourite chocolate bar comes from and doing something about it if you don't like where it comes from; not necessarily stopping buying products but just holding people to account who are using chocolate - forms of chocolate production which you're not happy with.

Sarah: So if people wanted to actually sign the postcard that you've just mentioned. How do they get hold of that from STOP THE TRAFFIK?

Jo: It's downloadable from the website, if you go to www.stopthetraffik.org you can find out all about the campaign there.

Sarah: Brilliant stuff. So I'm guessing that there are other companies out there that haven't signed up for it yet. I'm guessing that the voice of their customers is quite a huge influencing factor for them to change their practice?

Jo: Yes it is. The consumer power as I've said is very important.

Sarah: You've just explained to us how we could get involved in changing some of the chocolate industry. I'm wondering what other ways people could engage with STOP THE TRAFFIK?

Jo: OK. Well all over the country there's action groups working on STOP THE TRAFFIK'S campaigns. So getting in contact with people in your local area, who are working on projects in your local area. Working together on new ideas of how to combat some of the problems with human trafficking and finding out from STOP THE TRAFFIK what the recent developments and new campaigns there are either from the website or by e-mail contact.

Sarah: Now your role as a volunteer is really to inform people and let people know about the current picture. So I guess people once they've got the information, they may feel like they want to give talks at different organisations or gatherings of people and share their information as well. So they could also do what you do, couldn't they?

Jo: Absolutely yes. I've spoken to a variety of different audiences and that's something that you can do with a group in your local area. It is very important to create awareness and communicating the complexities of human trafficking so that the signs can be recognised and the issue understood is vital. So from your local schools to universities, to trade unions, to churches and in various forms whether it be debates or workshops or talks, these are all very important. Just getting it out there.

Sarah: If people wanted more details about that, that website once again for them.

Jo: www.stopthetraffik.org

Since this interview, and only 2 months into the March on Mars campaign, Mars announced that they will certify their ENTIRE global product range as part of the rain forest allicance - which means traffik and slave free- by 2020. To show their commitment to this and to give us something in the intern period, in the UK and Ireland Galaxy bars will be traffik free by 2010.

Us campaigners with the help of STOP THE TRAFFIK are beginning to see signs of success so we are turning the attention to Nestle and asking what they are doing. You can now download campaign letters to Nestle from the march on Mars website.