The only acceptable answer is zero. The majority of those consulted would answer without batting an eyelid to the question of how many slavs they work for them than any, of course. But it is lie.
Apparently innocuous data such as what are you eating, what clothes do you wear, what medicines do you take and what electronic devices you use bring out a much more disturbing reality. Dozens of slaves work for you. There is a provocative tool that allows this calculation to be made with relative precision, at a time when multiply the alarms on the expansion of forced labor in recent years.
A report published last week by the UN concludes that between 2016 and 2021, due to climate change, the pandemic and armed conflicts, the number of victims of forced labor went from 25 to 28 million worldwide, especially in factories, construction and agriculture. Is a hidden reality, sidelined by governments and citizens of developed countries, who prefer to look elsewhere, a more pleasant and morally less problematic. However, the EU announced last Wednesday a important step to combat this scourge.
The European Commission will ban the products made by forced labour. The new regulation will not be approved until next year and two more will have to pass before the member states begin to apply it. Several NGOs have already criticized it because it will be the national governments that determine how they apply it and why avoid citing any country or sector in particular, but there is no discussion about who will be the main affected by this measure: China.
Beijing has been imposing forced labor on the Uyghur Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region for years, according to numerous investigations. It is estimated that one fifth of cotton products used by the fashion industry are “stained & rdquor; for this exploitation of the Chinese regime, as well as half of all the polysilicone worldwide, a key component of solar panels.
The calculation
The european consumers They benefit from all this. They usually don’t know, or don’t want to know, or act like they don’t, but there is a tool that brings this invisible reality into the world. more personal sphere, allowing you to calculate how many of your possessions a slave has intervened. Is named Slavery Footprint (the imprint of slavery) and its mechanism is simple: a survey about your consumption habits.
Let’s put a close example. This editor. Man, 45 years old, with a partner and a young son, has a car, no jewelry, lives for rent in a three-bedroom apartment in Madrid, tries to eat a balanced diet, his wardrobe is quite squalid, he is not very prone to to buy technological gadgets, uses few beauty products and hardly takes any medicine.
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The tool asks for all these details. As you get the answers, offer data They help to understand the magnitude of the problem. For example, in the tab that asks about age, he explains that for many Pakistani boys forced labor starts at 13 and ends at 30. On diet: “Forced labor is common in much of the population. seafood industry in Southeast Asia, which imposes 20-hour work days to peel 18 kilograms of shrimp & rdquor ;. Or about jewelry: “There are not only blood diamonds. The rubies they are the second product that Burma exports the most, after teak wood, and in their mines they usually use forced labor & rdquor ;.
And that’s how you get to the last screen, which gives you the number of slaves working for you. In this case, 44. That is, 44 more that the only acceptable answer.