24/7 Customer support here

Third World country as a Theme of Tracy Chapman’s song

   Poor girl from a third world country- that is the image that we get from Tracy Chapman’s song “Mountains of Things”. The songwriter is trying to get inside girl’s world and feel what she must be feeling. She desires to enter the “other world”, the world of greed and injustice but she can not, not on her own will. She is asking for them to help her because they are the ones who have the responsibility of the condition she is into now. She lives in poverty, fear, discrimination and torture and this is a result of their need to consume lavishly to no extent. She is just hoping that they will someday come and find her. Because they know she exists and they know who she is too, because they have exploited and used her in the worst possible way for their personal maximisation profit. “Sweet lazy life, champagne and caviar “are something that she can only dream of and will probably never have the chance to live unless she is given the opportunity…

   Furthermore, she criticises the so called “sweatshops” .Sweatshop is any workplace where workers are subject to extreme exploitation. There are many factors that lead to the creation of sweatshops around the world but they are all perpetuated by lies, myths and secrecy. Sweatshops are more than just labour abuse, you will also find social injustice, poverty, discrimination, women and child abuse and trafficking and also environmental damage. Developed countries take advantage of the cheap labour and also the lack of knowledge, and exploit other human beings to a frightening extent in order for themselves to gain more and more all the time. No matter how many material things they earn, their greed is endless without giving them any pleasure but by terrorizing and destroying other people lives. After a research from UNICEF it has been released that 11 million children die every year from largely preventable causes. During the last 90 years there are many organizations, such as UNICEF, UNESCO, the ILO and IPEC, which try to do as much as they can to bring in a new fair trade and social system where there is free education for everyone, no discrimination, protection of children, a fair living wage, respect for cultural identity, cooperative and healthy workplaces, consumer education and public disclosure, environmental sustainability and fair trade certification. They are fighting for a world in which children will have the opportunity to earn a name and gain a personal distinction. A crucial step is to make the time-bound eradication of the worst forms of child labour and exploitation, a cause for all of us, not in words, but in action; not in speeches but in policies and resources. It is a global concept we all share across regions, cultures, spiritual traditions and development levels. A cause to which we should all want to contribute in practical terms.

   Finally she expresses her query of what is the reason of constantly consuming and buying more than you need even though there is no true value in what you gain. She implies that when we die our posthumous fame is not the amount of wealth or materials we leave behind but the goodness and the kindness of our hearts. Additionally, what use do thousands of materials have in front of the happiness that is pictured upon young children’s faces when they are given something we assume standard.

   Conclusively I believe the major problem in less-developed countries is the lack of education. The link between poverty and education is especially important because the economic abyss between the rich and the poor has widened over the past decade. Now despite unprecedented global economic expansion, more and more people live in even deeper poverty. In the fight against degradation of less-developed countries, child labour and exploitation of children education must go hand in hand with global measures to buffer poor nations through steps such as, as I mentioned above, fairer trade, more aid, deeper debt relief, better investment policies and more stable commodity prices. A strategic combination of such measures would give all of us a rare chance to end the vicious cycle of poverty, discrimination and exploitation and reclaim lost lives. It is not right to write off the lives and futures of the youngest and most vulnerable members of our ‘world’ when we hope, dream and expect that one day they will change the world by creating a better and happier one. We should try to extend the gains that some children already enjoy also to this isolated group of the world to all these children that are now lost in such dangerous obscurity and help them emerge into a brighter future.

Bibliography:
H. T. Graham and Roger Bennett, (1998), Human Resource Management, Financial Times, Prentice Hall, 1998
A. Griffiths and S. Wall, (2001), Applied Economics: An Introductary Course, Longman, (9th edition)
M. Parkin, M. Powell and K. Matthews, (2000), Economics, 4th Edition, Addison Wesley Longman
Websites:
www.ichr.org
www.hrw.org
www.senser.com
www.sweatshops.org
www.tutor2u.net

BACK TO MUSIC