Earlier this year, Gethin Chamberlain wrote about the tens of thousands of girls who are trafficked each year from India’s tea producing communities to New Delhi, the Middle East – even the UK. His article was harrowing to read.
Today, UNICEF are launching a new collaboration with The Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) specifically directed at protecting children and young people in Assam against this kind of exploitation. The partnership - which will focus on education, engagement and empowerment programmes - will be funded by the Dutch Sustainable Trade initiative (IDH), and ETP members; Tesco, OTG (Meßmer), Tata Global Beverages (Tetley, Tata Tea), and Taylors of Harrogate (Yorkshire Tea), and Typhoo.
As a former aid worker, and now responsible sourcing director at Tesco, I’m proud that we are supporting this programme and that we’re the first international retailer to join the ETP. As a result of our close relationships with a number of those organisations we were able to play a key role in bringing this programme together. It is the first collaboration of its kind involving the tea industry at state, community and national levels. And it involves all the relevant organisations and agencies required to tackle child exploitation in Assam– both within and beyond the tea supply chain.
Our collective ambition in forming this alliance is not just to deliver short-term protection to young people. We hope to make a significant and lasting difference to their communities. To do that, all of us must understand the root and scale of what has been happening. As Gethin’s article demonstrates, this exploitation of young people is highly complex, and the issues are often hidden and difficult to address. Across India, for example, more than 80 million children a year leave school without completing eight years of education, while 43% of girls are married before they are 18.
But while child protection can be a challenge across many parts of India, we also know that children from tea communities are often the last to receive support – and the challenge in these areas is compounded by complications of poverty, gender and caste.
Achieving significant change therefore requires a range of interventions. This three-year programme seeks to target the wider cultural and social issues which have fuelled the rise in trafficking. Central to this is the need to equip young people with the skills, knowledge and confidence they need to protect themselves and secure a better future. In particular the programme will:
- Equip more than 25,000 girls with the knowledge and life skills that will help them secure a better future and reduce their vulnerability to violence, abuse and exploitation.
- Give more than 10,000 community members the knowledge and training to protect children from all forms of violence, abuse and exploitation.
- Make families in each community aware of children’s rights and the support they can call on to help educate and protect their children.
- Work with state and district government to improve the quality of education and the effectiveness of child protection policies to help make a sustainable difference to the lives of children now and in many years to come.
Tea is a priority supply chain for Tesco both because it sustains hundreds of thousands of jobs in developing countries and also because it is hugely important to our customers. Assamese tea, alongside East African, is the backbone of the most popular premium tea blends in the UK. This strong tea has been a favourite in the UK since Victorian times. What’s more, as well as being a mainstay of the blends, Assam second flush is famed throughout the world as a standalone tea which commands prices globally exceeded only by Darjeeling’s first flush.
Improving the tea industry is important to Tesco because the industry globally suffers from endemically low wages, as ETP and Oxfam have shown, and we want to be part of helping to change that.
While we believe the Assam partnership can create real change in the region, it is also indicative of the opportunity for businesses to help create real change in their supply chains. Trade globally is a tremendous force for good and in recent decades across Asia has helped lead to the fastest reductions of mass poverty in history.
But the benefits are not consistent or universal. As we move to a world where all supply chains are open, where the expectations of customers are changing, we believe that businesses need to ensure they are part of the solution to improving conditions for the people and communities in their supply chain who face challenges.
With our trade comes the chance and to help engage, influence and improve. That can feel intimidating, but it is also an incredible opportunity.
Giles Bolton is responsible sourcing director at Tesco Plc. In 2007 he wrote the activist book Aid and Other Dirty Business, on how aid, trade and globalisation affect Africa.
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