Opinion: Katherine Shaw of World Vision has conducted research into the darker side of the beauty industry
MOST OF US will have used a cosmetic brand throughout our lives and many of us will have makeup and cosmetics in our bags, drawers and at our desks. The highly profitable sales of these cosmetics – a 95 billion dollar global industry – are driven by a huge body of advertising whether through traditional ads or more recently via the inescapable feeds of influencers on social media.
The findings of our research are stark and we found that most glossy beauty products are likely to contain ingredients gathered by children in mines and on farms in low-income countries. ‘Cruelty free’ products may not involve animal testing, but they are likely to include ingredients procured from child labour, and despite decades of progress, the numbers of child labourers who work to support their family or have been trafficked, forced or coerced to work has been increasing since 2016.
We also found that the risk of children of poor families being pushed into labour happens when the work is poorly paid or where education and other opportunities are hard to come by. We often think of child labour as that in a factory or forced sexual exploitation – both of which are incomparably horrific for a child to have to experience. However, when we talk about child labour in cosmetics supply chains, it’s pretty representative of the bulk of child labour in the world today.
However, many are still vague, audit practices are unfortunately easy to circumvent and we need to go further, all the way down to the communities where we work. The research we carried out was placed on hold by the pandemic and that has been helpful in a way as it has given us the opportunity to visit some of the same communities twice and see the changes over a four-year period.
Incredibly dedicated agriculture and livelihoods colleagues travel to remote communities and work with them to make their agricultural practices as profitable as possible. Without changes from the companies who are procuring these products though, we can only do so much. The lasting change for these communities will come when they are given greater bargaining power and paid a fair price for their products.
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