By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/unblood1nestle101409.html
UNITED NATIONS, October 14 -- As Halloween approaches in the United States, when tons of chocolates will be bought and handed out as treats, at the UN an organization Stop the Traffik held a briefing and was asked about child labor in cocoa production in Cote d'Ivoire. The group's web site asks, "Nestle, What Are You Doing?"
Inner City Press asked, since Nestle is a member of the UN Global Compact, about human rights and fair labor, what is the UN doing? And since the UN has 7000 peacekeepers in Cote d'Ivoire, what has it done on the child labor and trafficking issue? Video here, from Minute 24:33.
Steve Chalke, the founder of Stop the Traffik and "UN.GIFT's Special Advisor on Community Action against Human Trafficking" at first answered that Nestle is not the problem, the industry is the problem. But them he went on to praise Cadbury and Mars, at least in the UK and Australia, for making commitments which Nestle has yet to make.
Simone Monasebian, Chief of New York Office of UN Office on Drugs and Crime, did not answer about the UN Global Compact or about UN Peacekeeping in Cote d'Ivoire. (The UN's envoy there, Choi Young-jin, reads his mandate so narrowly that on October 13 he declined to comment not only the the Trafigura toxic waste scandal, but also the timing of elections). Rather, Ms. Monasebian said that UNODC gets only 10 percent of its funds from the UN's regular budget. The rest, she said, is voluntary and earmarked. If Member States gave money for this issue, UNODC would do more.
She mentioned that the last President of the General Assembly Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann named two facilitators to being informal consultations toward a global plan of action on the topic, and that some say current PGA Ali Treki has named a third facilitator.
Inner City Press asked PGA Treki's spokesman about this at the noon briefing, he said he hadn't heard, to ask the Third Committee. But people say that the Ambassador of Tunisia has been named. Watch this site.
