Child labour in cocoa production

Some chocolate-producing companies employ exploitative labor practices (notably enslavement of young males) in contemporary chocolate plantations in west Africa. In the Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), it is documented that boys aged between 12 and 16 have been sold as slaves. Most slaves are impoverished young men and boys from Benin, Togo, and Mali. Children are generally found traveling or begging and lured to the Ivory Coast, where they are sold. [1] Traffickers promise them paid work, housing, and education; instead, they are forced to labour and undergo severe abuse working on the cacao farms. The Ivory Coast is the world's largest producer and exporter of cocoa beans, with west Africa collectively supplying nearly 50% of world cocoa. Slavery and other exploitative working conditions can be difficult to detect in remote plantations. [2] It is also diffcult for outside observers to distinguish between child labour, child slavery, and child abuse.

Disclosure

A 1998 report from UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, concluded that some Ivory Coast farmers use enslaved children, many of them from the poorer neighboring countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Togo. A report by the International Labour Organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, also found that trafficking in children is widespread in West Africa.

The practice first reached a wider public in 2001 with a British television documentary, Slavery: A global investigation, made by Kate Blewett and Brian Woods. It claimed that 90% of Ivory Coast cocoa plantations use forced labor. A ship was found near West Africa allegedly carrying child slaves.

Another reporter, Sudarsan Raghavan working for Knight Ridder, traveled deep into the Ivory Coast where farms used child slaves. [3] He claimed that the Ivorian government is involved in the practise, as are the farmers and chocolate manufacturers in The Americas and Europe, and that chocolate consumers may not know of the problem associated with the chocolate they buy. Following the broadcast of this programme some British consumer groups demanded that the United Kingdom’s major chocolate producers, Cadbury and Nestle, source chocolate that is untainted by slavery. These large companies buy cocoa at International Exchanges and Ivorian cocoa is mixed with other cocoa making it impossible to tell which cocoa is slave produced.

In response to public pressure, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, a trade group for American chocolate makers, acknowledges that slaves are harvesting cocoa on some Ivory Coast farms. [4]

A BBC reporter, Humphrey Hawksley, reported in 2001 that uncounted numbers of children have been reported missing in Sikasso, Mali. [5] Many of them are believed kidnapped and sold as slaves for about US$30. Other children are sold by their parents. In the poor parts of Mali street sellers and other slum families sometimes sell their children into slavery for a few dollars. It is believed that 15,000 or more children are in forced labor camps in the Cote d'Ivoire, some under 11. They are unlikely ever to be reunited with their families. Often they are held forcibly on farms and made to do tiring work for 80 to 100 hours per week and those who attempt to escape are beaten. A former slave, Aly Diabate, said, "The beatings were a part of my life. Any time they loaded you with bags (of cocoa beans) and you fell while carrying them, nobody helped you. Instead they beat you and beat you until you picked it up again." [6] Malick Doumbia, who used to be a child-slave, said that he had escaped but thousands are still there and if just one was freed through the report that would be good. The Sikasso police chief is sure the children have gone to slavery. He says the children are overworked until they become sick and some die.

Save the Children Fund established a refuge for former slave-children, but currently no child is there. Mali's Save the Children Fund director, Salia Kante, has stated, "People who are drinking cocoa or coffee are drinking their blood. It is the blood of young children carrying 6kg of cocoa sacks so heavy that they have wounds all over their shoulders. It's really pitiful to see."

The International Labor Organization in its report Combatting Child Labour in Cocoa Growing [www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/ipec/themes/cocoa/download/2005_02_cl_cocoa.pdf] disputes the alleged size of the child slave labor problem. The report notes that of the 200,000 children working on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast, only 12,000 are not working with or in the vicinity of their relatives, thereby suggesting possible trafficking in a maximum of only 6% of cases of child laborers. Regarding the charge that cocoa farming is child abuse, the report notes that the two major allegations of child abuse are that a) children used machetes and b) children applied pesticides. These practices are common on farms throughout the developing world but considered child abuse in the developed world.

A 2005 study by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and by The World Bank, "Modeling farmers' decisions on child labor and schooling in the cocoa sector: a multinomial logit analysis in Cote d'Ivoire." [7] also shows the main issue to not be one of child slavery, but rather the more common phenomenon of children working on family farms. It notes that 98% of Ivorian cocoa farms are less than 12 ha in size, run by small family farmers who mainly employ family labor. The investigators surveyed over 11,000 people working on Ivorian cocoa farms and found no instances of child slave labor. Rather, the main issue of concern was families' economically-based decisions to put their children to work in the fields rather than send them to school.

In 2007, UNICEF reconfirmed the presence of child trafficking in the cocoa industry in an interview with UNICEF's Representative in Côte d’Ivoire, Youssouf Oomar.

Likewise, children from neighbouring countries such as Burkina Faso, Togo and Mali are brought to Côte d’Ivoire to work in its robust cocoa farming industry, among other outlets for child labour. Their rights are not respected and they are exposed to wide-ranging exploitation and abuse. [8]

Calls to action

Action has been called for by a range of anti slavery groups. Consumer boycotting has been suggested. A general boycott of cocoa products would be relatively ineffective, as non-slave products would also be harmed.

Anti-Slavery International states, "Because of the way the chocolate industry buys its cocoa it is not possible to ensure that slave or other forms of illegal exploitation have not been used in its production." In the organisation’s opinion companies ought to buy from plantations directly to ensure proper treatment of workers. If they use Middlemen or exchanges they should work with the governments of the countries, which grow cocoa to enforce acceptable conditions of work.[9]

The Anti-Slavery Society states: "If the manufacturer experiences an unexpected surge in consumer demand and purchases cocoa on the spot market, there is a significant risk that a proportion of the purchase might have come from plantations in West Africa which grow and harvest cocoa using slaves or unfree labor.[10]"

Carole Pearson of the American lobby group Organic Consumers Association urges consumers to work against slavery by boycotting main brands and instead buying only chocolate with a Fair Trade Label. [11]

Fred E. Foldvary of the Department of Economics, Santa Clara University, California suggests the following action:-[12]

government legislation requiring "made by slaves" labels on products so that public pressure can be applied worldwide and people know what they are buying and that people should apply pressure onto their governments to get such labeling.
people write to their elected representatives and to chocolate and cocoa manufacturers, including Hershey Foods, Archer Daniels Midland and See's in areas where they trade as well as those in the section above. [13]
activists to expand Fairly Traded cocoa produce to North America and other areas. Fair trade cocoa produce is currently mainly based in Europe. [14]

In September 2005, Dutch member of parliament Femke Halsema filed a motion to abolish European imports of cacao based on slave labour. In a gesture to compensate cacao producers the motion also included the proposal to increase the minimum percentage of cacao required in chocolate. [15]

In 2005 Dutch documentary maker Teun van der Keuken attempted to introduce a slave trade-free chocolate bar at the premiere of the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in London [16]. When he was prohibited from doing this, he started his own production of bars called Tony's Chocolonely. This is the first guaranteed slave-free chocolate bar in the world[17]. He also turned himself in to the Dutch government for knowingly buying goods obtained through a crime. He is reasoning that when he eats chocolate knowing that cacao is derived from slave labour, he is in fact committing a crime. He believes that a conviction under this premise would effect precedent that would ease the prosecution of European slave-produced chocolate brokers. [18]. However, the state was not eager to prosecute. Van der Keuken has been asked for hearings at the court, two child-slaves from Africa have attended these hearings and are helping Van der Keuken by trying to get him sued.

There is a campaign to distribute leaflets when “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is screened. [19]

StoptheTraffick UK continues campaigned on this issue in April 2007. [20]

On April 3, 2007 the BBC reported that child labor was continuing on cocoa plantations. [21]

Fairly-traded chocolate

Fair Trade chocolate products are the only chocolate products at present which are guaranteed not to contain any cocoa sourced from a slave plantation.[22]

Response to action

The Chocolate Manufacturers Association is surveying Ivorian farms. The United States Labor Department is trying to end West African child labour in cooperation with the International Labor Organization.

References