The Observer, October 6, 2006
Volume XXXIX, Issue 6
Clothing donation has hidden effects
The simple act of donating a shirt to the Goodwill has potential implications that reverberate through our globalized economy.
Last year, Hurricane Katrina inspired compassion among many Ugandans I knew. One woman's Kampala-based church group even organized a drive to send second-hand clothing to New Orleans. The charitable act gave me pause: most of the clothing worn by the largely poor population in Uganda is castoff clothing originally sent from the United States. One small boy hopped onto the public taxi sporting a high school softball t-shirt, signed by most of the team members.
I came to understand that the sight of children wearing old Batman t-shirts, or women sporting second-hand designer knock-off jeans, is common in Africa. I was walking with a friend, who grabbed my arm and pointed out a young girl carrying a pink and black bag that he was fairly certain retailed in New York City that most recent spring season.
It turned out that much of the used clothing donated to Africa is done so in the name of charity, but is in reality purchased by wholesalers, who can take advantage of the clothing's status as "aid," and avoid the tariffs or taxes imposed on imports. The practice has had several consequences: cheaper clothing for Africans, and the proliferation of used clothing merchandise that is primarily responsible for the death of the African textile industry.
My point is not to discourage clothing donation; battered women's shelters and the AIDS Task Force make use of gently used clothing. The point is that these actions here have consequences for what happens abroad. The donation of a single shirt may not be of much consequence, but the collective movement of millions of castoff shirts brought Zambia's textile industries to a grinding halt in the mid-90's.
But perhaps we can take a hopeful message in the power of collective action. One phone call to a policymaker, repeated a hundred times, becomes a tide of influence that determines whether or not a bill passes or fails. The collective power of the Student Global AIDS Campaign caused the drug company Gilead to take active steps toward making tenofovir, an HIV prophylactic that it manufactures, cheaper and more accessible in developing countries (or, the Global South).
The unfair inequalities that exist between the developed countries of the global North and South must be remedied by large-scale policy change. Debt relief has prevented countries from investing in infrastructure, and unfair patent protections have unnecessarily inflated the price of lifesaving AIDS drugs. By first understanding the problem, and then focusing the collective power of students, students can fight the war against disease, poverty, and lack of self-determination for developing countries.
