Spend a day on social media and you’ll quickly see claims of ‘oppression’, thrown around as if such a word has no meaning. Endless whining about how bad we all have it, rants about pocketless women, sexist air conditioning, or men always taking out the bins; tweeted out on phones, mined by slaves who could only dream of such problems. Yup. For all our tears and tales of woe, we in the developed world don’t know how good we have it. I continually have to remind myself of how lucky I am, simply for being born in this country, and at this time in history; and remember there are hundreds of millions, who are living lives so much more difficult than mine, that it is unimaginable. Yet many westerners, who have only known a life of privilege, fall over themselves to compete about who is more ‘oppressed’, whilst forgetting that the truly oppressed don’t have a say in such a conversation, because they are…. well, actually oppressed. One in ten of the world’s children are in child labour. Whilst in absolute numbers, there are more people in slavery today, than there have ever been in human history. No. Modern slavery, child labour, and other horrific abuses of human rights, are not consigned to the history books. It’s just not being done by the colonial supervillain of Great Britain, or the evil confederacy of America; but in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and South America – where the handwringing and virtue signalling of the woke are simply uninterested, or too afraid to campaign. So this weekend take a moment to put down your phone and appreciate what you have, and will always have. Remind yourself that you are not ‘oppessed’, none of us are, we simply have the good fortune of forgetting what such a word even means. Oppression is now invisible to us, until we look behind the scenes… ~ UNICEF Child Labour 2020  Cobalt Mining  International Labor Organisation 2022  Images by UNICEF, and Bruce Mars. #humanrights #modernslavery #childlabor #slaverystillexists #socialjustice

2023-11-24