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Indian Student Leads Campaign against Whitening Creams

Unilever reportedly made $500 million from Fair & Lovely sales last year. AFP
Unilever reportedly made $500 million from Fair & Lovely sales last year. AFP
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Indian Student Leads Campaign against Whitening Creams

Unilever reportedly made $500 million from Fair & Lovely sales last year. AFP
Unilever reportedly made $500 million from Fair & Lovely sales last year. AFP

When Chandana Hiran was a child, strangers would urge her to lighten her skin. Today the Indian student is leading a campaign against whitening creams as global anti-racism protests highlight the obsession with fair complexions for many in Asia.

The campaign achieved its first victory when cosmetics giant Unilever dropped the word "fair" from its popular Fair & Lovely skin-lightening cream. L'Oreal and Johnson & Johnson announced similar initiatives.

"They have been thriving on selling insecurities to women," 22-year-old Hiran, who launched an online petition against Fair & Lovely, told AFP.

"The narrative is that if you are dark-skinned, you cannot achieve anything in life. So being a dark-skinned girl I've always felt that maybe... I need to be fair. If I'm not, then maybe I don't deserve those things."

Multinationals have long profited from sales of whitening creams, facewash and even vaginal bleaching lotions, by advertising the message that beauty, success and love are only for pale-skinned people.

Unilever made $500 million from Fair & Lovely sales in India last year, according to Bloomberg.

Now, after mounting outrage sparked by the Black Lives Matter protests in Western cities, companies like Unilever said they "want to lead the celebration of a more diverse portrayal of beauty".

But campaigners warn their fight has just begun and that, without greater efforts to counter entrenched bias against darker skin, the rebranding remains superficial.

According to AFP, the skin-lightening industry is one of the world's fastest-growing beauty segments, and is forecast to be worth $31.2 billion by 2024, WHO.

In India, a nation of 1.3 billion people, whitening products make up about half the skincare market.

"There's no letting society off the hook here," activist Kavita Krishnan told AFP.

Nevertheless, "corporate companies, commercial interests cannot simply use social bias as an alibi", she added.

But change is coming, said campaigner Emmanuel, who believes future generations will see the world -- and themselves -- differently.

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10 Endangered Black Rhinos Sent from S.Africa to Mozambique

Kenya Wildlife Services veterinarians and rangers rush to aid a sedated female black Rhinoceros that has been selected for translocation to the Segera Rhino Sanctuary from the Lake Nakuru National Park on June 07, 2025. (Photo by Tony KARUMBA / AFP)
Kenya Wildlife Services veterinarians and rangers rush to aid a sedated female black Rhinoceros that has been selected for translocation to the Segera Rhino Sanctuary from the Lake Nakuru National Park on June 07, 2025. (Photo by Tony KARUMBA / AFP)
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10 Endangered Black Rhinos Sent from S.Africa to Mozambique

Kenya Wildlife Services veterinarians and rangers rush to aid a sedated female black Rhinoceros that has been selected for translocation to the Segera Rhino Sanctuary from the Lake Nakuru National Park on June 07, 2025. (Photo by Tony KARUMBA / AFP)
Kenya Wildlife Services veterinarians and rangers rush to aid a sedated female black Rhinoceros that has been selected for translocation to the Segera Rhino Sanctuary from the Lake Nakuru National Park on June 07, 2025. (Photo by Tony KARUMBA / AFP)

Ten black rhinos have been moved from South Africa to Mozambique to secure breeding of the critically endangered animals that became locally extinct 50 years ago, conservationists said Thursday.

The five male and five female rhinos were transferred to Mozambique's Zinave National Park in a 48-hour road trip last week, said the Peace Parks Foundation, which took part in the translocation.

"It was necessary to introduce these 10 to make the population viable," communication coordinator Lesa van Rooyen told AFP.

The new arrivals will "secure the first founder population of black rhinos since becoming locally extinct five decades ago,” South Africa's environment ministry, which was also involved, said in a statement.

Twelve black rhinos had previously been sent from South Africa to Zinave in central Mozambique but the population was still not viable for breeding, Van Rooyen said.

Twenty-five white rhinos, which are classified as less threatened, were also translocated in various operations.

The global black rhino population dropped by 96 percent between 1970 and 1993, reaching a low of only 2,300 surviving in the wild, according to the International Rhino Foundation.

Decades of conservation efforts allowed the species to slowly recover and the population is estimated at 6,421 today.

Once abundant across sub-Saharan Africa, rhino numbers fell dramatically due to hunting by European colonizers and large-scale poaching, with their horns highly sought after on black markets particularly in Asia.

Mozambique's population of the large animals was depleted during the 15-year civil war, which ended in 1992 and pushed many people to desperate measures to "survive in very difficult circumstances", van Rooyen said.

Years of rewilding efforts have established Zinave as Mozambique’s only national park home to the "Big Five" game animals -- elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and buffalo.