Child Slave Labour And The Chocolate Industry
Posted on 07. Jun, 2010 by LynThomas in Business & Finance, Society
It is nearly ten years since the chocolate industry agreed to ensure that their cocoa beans and derivative products are grown, or processed without the worst form of child labour. However, the abuses still exist in Africa’s cocoa industry.
The West African nation of the Ivory Coast, situated right on the equator, is the world’s leading exporter of cocoa beans to the global market, with its 600,000 cocoa farms, supplying 70% of the world’s cocoa. Journalists are not welcomed in the area.
Young boys and some girls, between the age of 11 to 16, are sold into slave labour and forced to work on cocoa farms, to harvest the nut that produces the ‘brown gold’. The children work under inhumane conditions and extreme abuse, working with sharp machetes and poisonous sprays, from 6 in the morning, till 6 at night. Many are made to subsist on a diet of a few burnt bananas.
One ex-child slave said 18 children were locked into a 24 X 20 foot room, sleeping on a wooden plank. A small hole was just big enough to let in some air, but they were forced to urinate in a can.
They are too afraid to try to escape, as ones who attempted and were caught, were brutally beaten. These children have no concept of the end product, never having tasted chocolate in their life.
Many of the children come from neighbouring Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world.
Scars of Child Slave Labour
Agents hang around bus stations looking for children on their own, or begging for food. They lure the kids with promises of a bike, or $150 they can earn, which will assist their parents.
Other locateurs con poverty-stricken parents into selling their children. Many never receive the promised money.
Some parents believe that by selling their children to the ‘locateurs’ they are helping the children learn a new skill and being given the opportunity to earn money. The locateurs onsell the children to small farmers, who are desperate for cheap labour.
It is believed that children between 5 to 14 years old represent 45 – 50% of the workforce. The famers see no harm in employing children, as they have multiple wives and many children. Schooling is so expensive many children don’t go to school.
A UNICEF study reported that 200,000 children were trafficked annually in West and Central Africa. Overseers claim the children are ‘relatives’. They sell their cocoa to licensed traders, where no questions are asked.
One of the major problems is that the cocoa farmers are paid very poorly, often not even covering the cost of production.Their farms are in very remote areas, making policing very difficult.
Consumers and industry members in cocoa importing countries are demanding that governments step in and take more definitive action to stop the human rights violations. Large chocolate companies are being called upon to buy coca only from regulated farms, hopefully eliminating the use of child slave labour.
Chocolates
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[...] Abuses still exist in Africa’s cocoa industry in spite of it being nearly ten years since the chocolate industry agreed to ensure that their cocoa beans and derivative products are grown, or processed without the worst form of child labour. Read how the West African nation, the Ivory Coast, the world’s leading exporter of cocoa conscript… [...]
[...] accounts of young people who have escaped or been rescued from these farms. A recent entry on Tropic Post details a small bit of the experiences of these children, usually boys but sometimes girls between [...]