chocolate, diamonds and grace

We leave the Amazing Grace movie with joy in our hearts that slavery was abolished … years ago, as if we somehow were part of the victory and rejoice with the cute lead star – we did it, we worked so hard and abolished slavery!
Most of us in the Western world are blissfully unaware that slavery exists in the world today. Not just slavery of men and women, but slavery of children.
Last week my husband and I sat down to watch Blood Diamond. Millions of dollars spent to entertain us and tell us a story. I couldn’t stop weeping in the film. I didn’t know if it was fact or fiction. But I knew that the story was real. Children are treated this way in the world today. Ironically just the morning before watching the film, a friend had sent through an email with photos of beautiful diamond rings and I dreamed of wearing those rings on my fingers.
I don’t know if blood diamonds still exist, conflict diamonds, the beautiful and coveted prize of a child’s forced labour, the treasured result of a child’s death, families slaughtered, nations in war and ravaged by rebel armies.
I don’t know.
But I am determined to find out.

A question has been in my mind over the last few weeks. We know that 20 percent of the world lavishly enjoy 80 percent of the world’s resources. We go on, as if there is not much we can do for the poor, maybe support a child, give to the homeless. Yet I wonder, is it because they are poor that we are rich? Is it because we are rich, that they are poor? Is our 1st world wealth gathered up from the labour of the 3rd world poor? For example, can I buy cheap clothes and fill my cupboards with them because the labour is cheap to make them in China for example? Where the labourer is poor. Are they poor because I pay a cheap price for them?
Am I adorned in jewels because a child was taken at gun-point from their home and forced to dig up a sapphire for me?
I know nothing about the international marketplace, exchange rates and all the rest. I’m sure many amateur economists will argue all sorts of arguments. But I’m not looking for that. I’m looking for an answer.
When I was a little girl I dreamed of changing the world. I don’t want to give up just because the world doesn’t want to be changed.
I have a stirring in my heart. Maybe the children are crying out. Maybe the blood of the children is crying out. Maybe they are praying for us to help.
In the film amazing grace the wife of Wilburforce talks of not having sugar in her tea – sugar, the result of slave labour. When a lot of young women joined together, not having sugar – a culture was changed. A generation was changed.
Maybe back then it was easier to see who made the sugar. Now we have a huge global market. How do we know if slaves picked the cocoa beans for our chocolate, or if children were forced to dig for our jewels?
This is not a cheap thing for me to write. If I let you read it then I’m accountable for it. I need to be prepared to stand for it. I need to be sure to fight for it.

According to …antislavery.org
• The International Labour Organization estimates there are
218 million working children aged between five and 17 (2006)
• 126 million are estimated to work in the worst forms of child labour -- one in every 12 of the world's five to 17 years olds (2006)
• 74 million children under 15 are in hazardous work and should be "immediately withdrawn from this work" (2006)
• 8.4 million children are in slavery, trafficking, debt bondage and other forms of forced labour, forced recruitment for armed conflict, prostitution, pornography and other illicit activities (2002)

I don’t really know the facts or what we can do, but there must be something we can do. Every one of those children is more precious than a diamond, they are just as precious as our own children. What wouldn’t I do to save my own child?