HARVEY: The global march against child labor was born in a conversation that Ihad with Kailash Satyarthi– the very charismatic leader of the move to bringchildren out of bonded labor in India– the head of the South Asian Coalition onChild Servitude. KAILASH: We have ample proof that the children are being usedas slaves.
They are bought and sold. They are tortured. They are confined toworkplace. They are not able to leave their jobs. HARVEY: These are kids workingin brick kilns, working in farms as a part of bonded farm labor, working ingranite quarries; kids in sexual slavery, or being trafficked across national orstate boundaries for sexual purposes.
Those are the kinds of kids that thisglobal march is an effort to highlight. MARCHERS: Global March! HARVEY: So wedecided that the global march was a way by which we could bring internationalpressure to country after country. This was not just a simple protest. Along theway, organizers met with community groups like this one to try to link localconcerns with the March’s broader goals, which resonate with people inThailand.
They’re still reeling from the collapse of their currency. SULAK:Economic growth must take human dignity, human rights, environmental balance,into consideration. In the wake of Thailand’s financial crisis, BuddhistScholar Sulok Sivaraksa, like many activists, sees growing poverty in humanrights terms. SULAK: We have more prostitutes than monks. We have childlaborers. We destroy our environment.
The people in Bangkok itself, 20% live inslums. And many people don’t even live in the slums, they live under thebridges and so on and so forth. And yet people feel these are not human rightsissues. The Global March is just one new cross-border tactic–an illustration ofhow globalization from above leads to a globalized resistance from below. KAILASH: But in the case of children, in the case of poor people, they have nocalculations of their profit margins.
They always think of their compassion,their love, sharings, taking care of each other. So that is the realglobalization. So I believe that we have to learn from those children how toglobalize the world. Whether we learn from innocent children, worldly businessleaders, or concerned human rights activists, one thing is clear, globalizationis here to stay. In a world that is becoming more connected and interdependent,a curious collection of politically strange bedfellows has begun to coalesce ina search for solutions to complex global challenges.
In the process, they arediscovering some surprising things about this world– and about themselves. Amnesty International’s Pierre Sane. PIERRE SANE: We do not expect business tobecome a human rights defender. We know that if business adopts a human rightslanguage and behavior, it will be as a means to the long-term objective ofsecuring greater and greater profits. For us, human rights is an end, it’s anabsolute.
So there is a journey that we can go together. There is some tacticalalliances that we can develop. GOULDING: It’s perfectly possible to have atwo-track approach to this where some people very properly focus on the businessengagement issues and others focus on the human rights agenda. Many companies inthe global marketplace are trying to become what they call global corporatecitizens, and some even say human rights are now part of their businessprinciples.
Shell Oil’s Alan Detheridge DETHERIDGE: Companies like Shell have arole to play in promoting human rights. Not just the rights of its staff, notjust the rights of contractors who work for us, but promoting rights moregenerally, and certainly within the communities in and amongst whom we operate. As corporate leaders grapple with how to respond to human rights challenges,human rights activists are abandoning their traditional focus on abuses bygovernments. They are now confronting the many impacts of globalization that wehave explored in this report.
GAY MCDOUGALL: There’s been an explosion of humanrights organizations all around the world that are now in touch with eachanother, and are now beginning to talk more and more about common problems,common strategies. It’s no longer just the question of a human rightsorganization that focuses solely on the problems in their country. But they’reseeing the link between the problems in their country and problems acrossborders, regionally and internationally. Both Globalization’s proponents andcritics, see the fight for human rights as a major challenge. HORMATS: I thinkthere has been a lot of improvement in human rights around the world. This isnot to say that there is perfection and it’s not to say there are no problems.
But I think one of the great benefits that globalization has provided the worldis improvements in human well being. THABO MBEKI: Well, I think there is a verygood thing that is happening in the whole international economic debate. There’s issues of poverty, of a better life, of equity. Those issues arecoming back onto the agenda even of the international corporate world. Amovement away from merely what governs our decisions and behavior is the bottomline and that’s it. NADER: This is global trade without global law, withoutglobal democracy.
And if you have global trade and investment dominated by a fewgiant corporations, who pit one country against another without a rule of law,you’re going to have increasing pressure?both in the first world and in thethrid world ?standards of living and standards of justice. TUTU: I hold to theview that this is a moral universe. Goodness matters as it did forever in thepast. It will continue to do so.
Truth matters. Corruption matters. I meanwe’ve seen, we’ve seen why some of the financial institutions in Thailand,Indonesia, have gone under. It’s been basically, ultimately, that they haveflouted ethical rules, not so much just financial rules. It has been ethicalrules.
I have no qualms myself. I have no deep anxiety that we are suddenlygoing to become an amoral society because of globalization. Still questionsremain: Will globalization advance democracy and human rights, or will corporatepower triumph above all else? And, how can we as citizens of the world getinvolved and help provide solutions? C. HUNTER-GAULT: In this era ofglobalization, these are not academic questions but flash points for continuingdebate. A debate that will determine the values that will shape the world of the21st Century.
