How to end 21st century’s slavery and hunger?
The material wealth gap is an undeniable fact of our current world. The unequal income roots to the feudal system by sixteenth century and became uncontrollable with the industrial revolution. It is now at a level that the richest 300 people on earth have more wealth than the poorest 3,000,000,000. World system theory explains this situation perfectly. It is a system based on Marxism and it questions how power and dependency divided among the world and what keeps this balance. First, Oliver Cox started to write about this system then Immanuel Wallenstein improved it. This theory divides countries into 3 regions. Core, semi-periphery, and periphery. The core is the region which uses cheap labor and raw materials from other regions and sells the high-profit consumption goods to them. Semi-periphery provides both cheap labor and sells high-profit consumption goods while periphery just provides cheap labor and material to the core and semi-periphery regions and buys high-profit goods. That is why even though, many funds and investigations have been made to periphery regions, such as United Nation’s 8-millennium development goals, the wealth gap among regions never really shrunk. There are 27 million slave labors in the world today as a result of the improved capitalist system. Many factors contribute to the number of slave labors and one of the factor is me, you and us.
We contribute to this system with the items we buy. Slaves work on these items’ raw materials. Slave labors consist of both adults and children. There is 250,000 children slave labor and their contracts start at the age of thirteen and end when they reach the age thirty.
The seafood industry is one of the industry which uses this type of labor the most. Laborers work up to 20 hours a day to peel shrimps and the ones who attempt to escape experience violence and sexual assault.
While the cosmetic industry is known for using child labors, jewelry industry is common with their forced labor in mines with harsh conditions and no pay. Similarly, almost all technological devices have been touched by a slave.
Sports items are also the ones that are made in hard conditions and uses many slave workers. It is said that there are soccer ball manufacturers who force their workers to work up to 21 hours a day. As we can see, we have a big contribution to this slave chain. When I checked how much I contributed with my consumptions, I saw that 58 slaves worked for me till now. Learning this fact was shocking for me. I love seafood and that was one of the things increased my result as well as my textile consumption with the cotton t-shirts that I have. To reduce my reliance on slave labors, I want to have a new hobby, fishing. I will try to consume fishes that I have hunted and that will also give me some time to relax.
However, to make a big permanent impact to stop contributing this system, I know that we should find different solutions and widen our perspectives as human beings.
Patriarchy is not a person but a system which both men and women are involved in and there is a proven earning gap between men and women. 2/3 of women work unpaid with indirect payment even though most of them work longer hours than men. Credit and pension do not support women. In some countries, property ownership is banned for the woman, like Saudi Arabia. There, women still cannot own a land. It is illegal. However, they do not consider that women are the ones who invest in their children’s education and health when they have income. A study also showed if women farmers had the same access as men, 150 million people wouldn’t suffer from hunger. That is why, if we want to make big changes in world’s slavery and hunger we should add women to the workforce by giving them many opportunities. They should own their own farms, factories, and facilities. There should be laws globally that are in favor of woman to support any business idea or attempt they make.
We should educate both women and men according to fight with hunger, poverty, and slavery. Education increases health system, lowers crime, sexual harassment, and fertility. This way we also manage the overpopulation which we have learned during the first week of our course.
After education, of course, we should also think about the environment we are living in. That is why sustainability should be our next step to decrease hunger and poverty. I am so inspired by the green belt movement. It helps to end the hunger with the food a person has been farming and an awesome income for women as well as helps the nature to recreate itself. It is also nice to know the founder of this movement is Wangaria Mathai, a woman. It is an awesome example to show how constructive women are. For example, after hearing about green belt movement I came up with an idea. Weddings are big occasions in Turkey where I am from. People spend a lot of money on fancy invitation letters and candies that will be given to guests after the wedding as a memory of that day. All these are all unnecessary consumptions in our modern world. Everyone can hear about the wedding via emails and nobody eats that candies. What I thought is letting people know about the wedding via email and also saying them by doing this we saved enough money to plant a tree for you. This means, if 100 people would attend a wedding there would be 100 trees planted. They could take pictures with their own tree as a memory from that day. This would make a big impact on earth if this could become a trend for weddings.
I believe, every single person can support education and sustainability with this kind of simple ideas or by simply donating to social responsibility projects such as Malala Fund. I believe this is the permanent way to help decreasing slavery, poverty and hunger.
THINKING IREM 