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Fair Trade: What is Fair Trade? What is Fair Trade? Fair Trade is a system of exchange that honors producers, communities, consumers, and the environment. It is a model for the global economy rooted in people-to-people connections, justice, and sustainability. A Fair Price for Products For Fair Trade Certified™ products, a base price for the commodity is set by the international Fair Trade Labeling Organization. cover the cost of production and a living wage to cover the basics of food, shelter, clothing, education, and medical care. Investment in People and Communities Many Fair Trade producer cooperatives and artisan collectives reinvest their revenues into strengthening their businesses and their communities. Environmental Sustainability Fair Trade farmers and artisans respect the natural habitat and are encouraged to engage in sustainable production methods. Direct Trade Fair Labor Conditions Workers are guaranteed freedom of association and safe working conditions. Promote Fair Trade in your community!

Free2Work: End Human Trafficking and Slavery Products & Partners For the last 15 years Fair Trade USA has worked primarily in the developing world, empowering farmers and farm workers to fight poverty and improve their lives through better trade. Through this journey we’ve also become all too aware of the challenges and injustices faced by laborers in the global north. Issues like low pay, unsafe working conditions, exposure to harmful agrochemicals, child and forced labor, and sexual harassment are unfortunately without borders in the agricultural sector. These realities, many occurring in our own backyard, have driven a growing interest from consumers, companies, farms, NGOs and retailers to explore the possibility of Fair Trade in a broader global setting. To learn more about this opportunity, Fair Trade USA began conducting preliminary research and consulting with stakeholders back in 2009. Our goal was to better understand agriculture in different regions, identify key issues, and learn about other Fair Trade initiatives already in development.

Frontend Ratings A company's risk levels indicate the prevalence of child and forced labor in the particular production process and countries in which it is operating. A company can still receive an A if it is operating in HIGH RISK situations. A company operating in HIGH RISK areas must take more precautions to ensure against abuses than one operating in LOW RISK areas; thus, Free2Work grades such a company on a more rigorous scale. Free2Work draws country and industry risk data from the U.S. Free2Work draws country and industry risk data primarily from the U.S. Child labour: the tobacco industry's smoking gun | Global development At the height of the tobacco harvest season, Malawi's lush, flowing fields are filled with young children picking the big green-yellow leaves. Some can count their age on one hand. One of them is five-year-old Olofala, who works every day with his parents in rural Kasungu, one of Malawi's key tobacco growing districts. When asked if he will go to school next year, he shrugs his shoulders. One thing is clear to Olofala already: work comes first, education second. Such complaints are not uncommon. Since the handling of the leaves is done largely without protective clothing, workers absorb up to 54 milligrams of dissolved nicotine daily through their skin, equal to the amount of 50 cigarettes, according to 2005 research by Prof Robert McKnight, of the College of Public Health at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. At the consumer end of the chain, smokers are constantly reminded of the associated health risks. Until the 1980s, much of the world's tobacco was grown in the US.

Fairtrade / Get clued up / Campaign / Home - CAFOD What is Fairtrade?Fairtrade is a simple way to make a difference by thinking carefully about our everyday choices. It’s about better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability and fair terms of trade for small-scale farmers. Farmers and producers in the developing world – and some closer to home – are often the ones who bear the costs and risks of trade, while global companies make the profits. Fairtrade products such as cocoa, sugar, fruit, cotton and thousands of other top quality goods have been bought by companies for sustainable prices. This ensures that the world’s poorest growers and producers are able to earn a decent living and have a little extra to put back into their communities. Why does CAFOD support Fairtrade? We believe we are all part of the global food system - which means we have the power to change it. Speak out for a fairer food system>>> What is Fairtrade Fortnight? Find out more about the most recent Fairtrade Fortnight>>>

Child slavery and chocolate: All too easy to find In "Chocolate's Child Slaves," CNN's David McKenzie travels into the heart of the Ivory Coast to investigate children working in the cocoa fields. (More information and air times on CNN International.) By David McKenzie and Brent Swails, CNN Daloa, Ivory Coast (CNN) - Chocolate’s billion-dollar industry starts with workers like Abdul. He squats with a gang of a dozen harvesters on an Ivory Coast farm. Abdul holds the yellow cocoa pod lengthwise and gives it two quick cracks, snapping it open to reveal milky white cocoa beans. Abdul is 10 years old, a three-year veteran of the job. He has never tasted chocolate. During the course of an investigation for CNN’s Freedom Project initiative - an investigation that went deep into the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast - a team of CNN journalists found that child labor, trafficking and slavery are rife in an industry that produces some of the world’s best-known brands. It was not supposed to be this way. More about the Harkin-Engel Protocol It didn’t.

Two aspects of women's workload in West Africa THEME: Poor farm women not only work longer hours than men but often perform physically demanding work. It is now commonly recognized that in poorer households, women farmers usually work longer and harder than men. A 1999 IFAD Assessment of Rural Poverty confirms this pattern in the West and Central African countries. In the first place, poorer rural women in West Africa usually work longer hours a day than males in similar circumstances. In the Central Province of Cameroon, women’s working week is longer than 64 hours, whereas for men it is only about 32 hours. The Central Plateau of Burkina Faso provides a more detailed illustration of rural women’s workload. Second, women’s agricultural and domestic tasks are physically strenuous, often more than they need to be, owing to poverty and cultural reasons. In the Central Plateau of Burkina Faso, an estimated 5% of households own animal-draught equipment and animals. The situation is somewhat different in parts of Senegal. Adapted from:

Apple’s own data reveal 120,000 supply-chain employees worked excessive hours in November To its credit, Apple is now posting monthly information tracking the extent to which employees in its supply chain are working less than its standard of 60 hours per week. The introductory language to this information states: “Ending the industry practice of excessive overtime is a top priority for Apple in 2012.” The accompanying graph itself, however, contains data from Jan. 2012 through Nov. 2012 and suggests otherwise. Not only has Apple failed to end this practice, but progress has significantly reversed in recent months. Apple’s code of supplier conduct sets a maximum work week of 60 hours, with an exception clause, discussed below. In Jan. 2012, about 16 percent of the workers in Apple’s supply chain worked more hours than Apple’s maximum standard. This evidence is consistent with independent reports on production at Apple. Apple may very well respond that compliance has fallen recently, but that it is a peak period in which workers have chosen to work more hours voluntarily.

Child Labor in the Middle East - Modern Day Slavery Your are absolutely going to be stunned. We are making a huge amount of children work for long hours under terrible condition for little payment or no payment. It's hard to believe but those beautiful carpets that we have at home, are made by poor children in Western countries; such as, Pakistan and India. Hundreds of children are forced to work in carpet industy for taking care of their parents or some of them were kidnapped and thrown into this horrific place. They work for long hours in gloomy and dirty factories everyday with no choice. HOW are they caught??? These children are kidnaped to the industry after their mother's agreement mostly and when they are asked where their children have gone, they would answer "Their children have left with labor contracters who promised good jobs in the Persian Gulf. WHAT's going on??? The caught children would be locked in a room and given no food until they agree to weave on the looms. Emancipation Proclamation: See this beautiful smail.