How fair trade supports children's rights to a safer environment
Children around the world are too frequently denied clean air, water and land because of decisions made in the past over which they had no control. To that end, UNICEF's Children's Rights and Business Principles state that companies must respect and support children's rights in relation to the environment and land use. One increasing trend in product sourcing, the support of fair trade certification standards, can benefit children and their families whose work supplies retailers with all sorts of things, from bananas to tea.
Since the late 1940s various NGOs and religious groups have embraced fair trade as a more ethical means to source products from developing countries and then sell them around the world. These goods, which were at first mainly handcrafted items, included a premium imposed within the products' costs that in turn funded initiatives from education programs to health care clinics. The fair trade movement caught on within the agricultural sector in the 1990s as more consumers began to understand the value, and ethics, of purchasing sustainably and responsibly sourced coffee and chocolate. Now several certification agencies across the globe place labels on a range of products from apparel to flowers and even fresh produce. As larger companies such as Marks & Spencer and Whole Foods embrace fair trade, children who were once constantly exposed to chemicals and faced limited economic opportunities now have access to a cleaner environment, can safely continue their families' work if they so choose and keep ownership of their lands.
In El Salvador, El Guabo is one community where children's prospects have improved as a result of fair trade. For decades El Guabo's farmers have grown bananas, but making a decent living was made very difficult by coyotes, local produce brokers who were notorious for their aggressive tactics in wresting bananas from small family farms at a low price. In addition to facing a bleak future of working long days for little money, children in El Guabo lived in an environment ridden with pesticides. Crop dusters would regularly blanket the banana farms in chemicals. The massive banana stalks, or racimos, were encased in massive plastic bags that were steeped in chemicals. With day-care non-existent, children would be exposed to such dangerous chemicals while they accompanied their mothers who often worked in the fields.
How fair trade supports children's rights to a safer environment
Children around the world are too frequently denied clean air, water and land because of decisions made in the past over which they had no control. To that end, UNICEF's Children's Rights and Business Principles state that companies must respect and support children's rights in relation to the environment and land use. One increasing trend in product sourcing, the support of fair trade certification standards, can benefit children and their families whose work supplies retailers with all sorts of things, from bananas to tea.
Since the late 1940s various NGOs and religious groups have embraced fair trade as a more ethical means to source products from developing countries and then sell them around the world. These goods, which were at first mainly handcrafted items, included a premium imposed within the products' costs that in turn funded initiatives from education programs to health care clinics. The fair trade movement caught on within the agricultural sector in the 1990s as more consumers began to understand the value, and ethics, of purchasing sustainably and responsibly sourced coffee and chocolate. Now several certification agencies across the globe place labels on a range of products from apparel to flowers and even fresh produce. As larger companies such as Marks & Spencer and Whole Foods embrace fair trade, children who were once constantly exposed to chemicals and faced limited economic opportunities now have access to a cleaner environment, can safely continue their families' work if they so choose and keep ownership of their lands.
In El Salvador, El Guabo is one community where children's prospects have improved as a result of fair trade. For decades El Guabo's farmers have grown bananas, but making a decent living was made very difficult by coyotes, local produce brokers who were notorious for their aggressive tactics in wresting bananas from small family farms at a low price. In addition to facing a bleak future of working long days for little money, children in El Guabo lived in an environment ridden with pesticides. Crop dusters would regularly blanket the banana farms in chemicals. The massive banana stalks, or racimos, were encased in massive plastic bags that were steeped in chemicals. With day-care non-existent, children would be exposed to such dangerous chemicals while they accompanied their mothers who often worked in the fields.
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