Yet this view cannot be shared by all people, because organisations exist to destroy this illegal trade, which is the fastest growing in the world and is now second only to the arms trade. These include Stop the Traffik, Anti-Slavery and Wilberforce Central (named, of course, after William Wilberforce).

In the West, we think of people as being unequal, however much we claim that all people have the same opportunities. Celebrities are given values -- footballers are bought and sold by clubs for ridiculous amounts o fmoney, and people are said to have a value of '30 million' or '2 million' or '6 million'. What do these mean? Within the Congo, these amounts are unimaginable, far too large ever to be contemplated. Even an education is a huge luxury, though we take it for granted and it is just expected by all children in the West.

So if they were to die -- the slaves, the beaten, damned and destroyed children of unseen villages -- what would we think? If they were to be brutally murdered, choked to death in front of family and friends, what would we think? We would not even know. Here, such an event would be all over the news, with tabloids screaming about the outrage. There, the only ones that know and care are the people who watched them die for the sake of our mobile phones.

It is my view that no matter your race, gender, wealth or education, you are the same in value as everybody else. What is a lonely, hateful celebrity compared to an eight year old girl, who with her family is fighting for her life against oppression? She has people who love her in spite of her circumstances, perhaps because of them. And it is most likely that when in the vicinty of her family she has happiness beyond anything that celebrity has experienced. The rich are the poorest for joy. In the USA -- known worldwide to be rich -- the suicide rate is far higher than it is in African countries. They are some of the richest and most miserable people in the world.

Wealth is not everything. It is only when you cannot see past somebody's wealth and prosperity that you realise how narrow-minded you have become, and by then it is too late to save the children who died to make the laptop you are using to research it.

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Author guidance for This work

This is an essay I wrote in a Geography lesson. We had only 35 minutes to write it, and there was no planning -- we were only told about it today!

So please excuse a slightly unstructured argument.

We have been studying Coltan Mining in the Congo, hence why it is mentioned several times. Coltan is something that is used in mobile phones and laptops, and 80% of it comes from the Congo. In addition, it is far cheaper there than it is anywhere else, and so there are children mining day and night to extract it.

But on top of this there are wars going on; about 7 armies are in the Congo at the moment. There is no control and no laws. People die every day, for no reason.

updated Jun 18 '10 by delorfinde