Make Things Fair

For a while I’ve dreamed of setting up a site that will act as a source for information on Human Trafficking and Fair Trade, telling stories as well as offering ways to take action. A few months ago, after a little brainstorming with some friends (thanks Mark), I purchased the makethingsfair.com domain name. I hope that it will become a valuable resource and a place for sharing ideas and activities.

If you care about these issues, please show your support by:

1. Subscribing to receive email updates (click here)
2. Following @makethingsfair on Twitter
3. Contributing stories by email (stories [at] makethingsfair [dot] com)

Click here to visit Make Things Fair

Looks Can Kill

The website of my web design and development company, Looks Can Kill, hasn’t changed much since I first started the company back in 2005. I wanted to freshen it up, and to integrate it with WordPress, in the hope of expanding my portfolio offering, and having a place to file web related blog posts.

Click here to visit Looks Can Kill

Robert Mugabe’s ruling party, Zanu-PF, has recently renewed its interest in diamonds. Diamonds are a valuable asset for foreign exchange, especially when a government has been cut off from the international community by sanctions.
Late last year the military moved into Chiadzwa and began confronting and arresting independent miners. A helicopter attack in December left 200 dead and there are assertions that the military has claimed more victims. Zimbabwe’s opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), for example, says that hundreds more miners are buried in mass graves.

“I am earning in real money, it feels good,” says Majuru. “I can now put food on the table and feed my family.” A smile spreads across his face.

(read more here)

We noticed as we were getting in that this bus was extremely dirty. Filthy actually. And there was no air conditioning. As soon as we got on I noticed that they were all Palestinians on this bus. Immediately a lady holding her young son said to us in near-perfect English, “This is the bus for the Palestinians. You need to be on that other bus. It’s for foreigners and tourists.” I responded, “Oh that’s okay, we don’t mind coming with you”. She said, “Well, thank you, but you can’t. You HAVE to go on that bus.”

(read more here)

The idea of exploiting others to enjoy the most special moment of your life seems entirely alien to me. An ethically sound wedding was the only option. Fairtrade was the name of the game – our roses, wine and wedding rings were all sourced with ethics in mind.

(read more here)

In the case of Nigeria, in 2007, the French tire maker Michelin came in to the Iguóbazuwa Forest Reserve, a biologically diverse region supplying food for around 20,000 people. Michelin bulldozed the forest and local farm lands to convert them into rubber plantations. Women living there lost their subsistence farms and the local forest which provided medicinal herbs and plants.

~ Sustainablog

100 years ago William Cadbury chose beans from Ghana. A year ago we founded the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership. And from Autumn 2009 Cadbury Dairy Milk will be Fairtrade certified. Welcome aboard.

Click here for more (Thanks, @nomesbaker)

Worldwide, almost 20% of all trafficking victims are children. However, in some parts of Africa and the Mekong region, children are the majority (up to 100% in parts of West Africa).

(photo © Mitchell Kanashkevich)

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers – in some ways less so – but more open.

(Thanks Ashley & Rosemary)

Skinner’s research is very practical. He travels to places under cover, arranges to meet with a trafficker, and organizes to buy a person. During the book he also meets with various politicians and NGO staff, as well as parents whose children have been abducted.

Some of the things that Skinner discovers as he travels are shocking, especially where concerned with organizations who are perceived to be doing good. He notes that in southern Sudan, where research has shown there are around 11,000 people missing due to slavery, there is a Christian organization called Christian Solidarity International (CSI) who claim to have freed more than 80,000 slaves. It seems that the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (who are fighting for freedom from the North) have been using CSI’s ‘redemption’ process as a means to fund their troops through the use of fake slaves.

While in Haiti he comments:

Locals say that the main contribution of the peacekeepers to Haiti’s economy comes via the brothels

In other words those we expect to fulfill roles of integrity: keeping peace, dealing with injustice, tackling poverty; are actually propagating the problem.

Reading this convinces me that we have to do something to fight this injustice. There is nothing noble about celebrating the life of abolitionists like William Wilberforce without addressing the fact that today there are more people in slavery than at any other moment in history.