10 Years Later: West Africa Children Still Exploited To Make Chocolate

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — A report says West Africa's cocoa industry is still trafficking children and using forced child labor despite nearly a decade of efforts to eliminate the practices.

A U.S.-sponsored solution called the Harkin-Engel Protocol was signed in 2001 by cocoa industry members to identify and eliminate cocoa grown using forced child labor in West Africa by 2010.

Independent auditors at Tulane University's Payson Center for International Development said in a late September report that efforts have not come close to the target.

The report says that hundreds of thousands of children are still involved in work on cocoa farms, and are trafficked to Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world's two largest cocoa growers.

Comments

[Kate Stoune]

11:32 PM on 10/10/2010

Oh No ... this is absolutely horrible - this completely shakes my world ... NOW I will be sourcing my chocolate too because I do NOT want my chocolate habit supporting child slavery ... I am shocked by this - I truly had no idea.

http://responsiblecocoa.com/

[Wendy Chambers]

11:13 PM on 10/09/2010

I personally dont eat any chocolate - it is processed beyond an inch of its nutrients !! and Nestle are one of the worst ever, they also destory rainforests to plant palm oil plantations which are killing off the orang-u-tans - mmmmmm NICE company NOT !!!!

[whiteshoesATL]

09:51 PM on 10/09/2010

if makes u feel any better... my dad work's for Nestle's in South Carolina and he's treated like shit there too. No one wins in Corporate World... only those who wear suits n ties...

*youtube Comedian White Shoes

[Angie Cordeiro]

12:30 PM on 10/10/2010

"...No one wins in a Corporate World..."

I beg to differ, the winners are the selfishly blind and morally indifferent stock holders.

[whiteshoesATL]

07:57 PM on 10/11/2010

yep... like i said, "the suits n tie's"

those are the only one's that win

[Will Ingram]

07:32 PM on 10/09/2010

Oh, this is too, too much. Goddamn it. I don't buy diamonds because there is no such thing as a "conflict-free" diamond. I don't care what the jewelry stores say. They're lying. I refuse to wear jewelry of any kind--or give any away (which is a major impediment to my dating). In this way, I connect with my (and ALL of our) cousins in Africa who work the diamond mines and who cannot wear jewelry because they only have one arm.

I don't buy crap from China. And try to shop with that as a mandate. Go ahead. Try. I don't shop at Wal-Mart. I don't buy Nestle because, as noted, it is an extremely bad citizen. When I was in grad school, Nestle was STILL under indictment for pulling the "batteries and bullets" scam (think hooking kids on heroin with free samples--at first) on nursing women in the "third world." (Sorry, I hate that term and shudder to use it, but I have to think of the audience who reads this.) And I don't buy from Hershey because the company moved its corporate headquarters to a mail drop in the Bahamas to avoid paying taxes.

But I love chocolate. Now I have to quit chocolate? Abusing children for corporate profits can make me quit chocolate. Damn it!!! Do the Swiss or the Dutch do this, too? Who ISN'T exploiting the weak and powerless for chocolate? I need to know.

[shthar]

09:55 PM on 10/08/2010

mmmmm, the salt in the tears make it sooooo sweet.

[mamma christine]

02:33 PM on 10/08/2010

Now tell us what we can do about it! How do we know which chocolate to buy, how do we boycott slave made chocolate?

[pynecastle]

04:52 PM on 10/08/2010

One name is HERSHEY'S. And if you look at their packaging, it doesn't say "produced by.." or "...made by", It says "Distributed by...".

[MNinWI]

12:07 PM on 10/09/2010

Nestle is a bad company-I haven't bought Hershey or Nestle for many years-they refuse to acknowledge their responsibilities in this-just say their agents don't use child slave labor but they do.
Dove is doing the right thing as are others. Here is a link to a good website about it.
http://vision.ucsd.edu/~kbranson/stopchocolateslavery/main.html

[Will Ingram]

07:33 PM on 10/09/2010

MMMMmmmm....LOVE Dove chocolate.

[Will Ingram]

07:39 PM on 10/09/2010

Thanks for the referal...

[liamtheruiner]

12:25 PM on 10/08/2010

name names! are all chocolate companies using these children, or just some of them? WHO DO I BOYCOTT, GODDAMNIT? time to do some research...

[MNinWI]

12:12 PM on 10/09/2010

You can do a google search-it's important to know. I refuse to buy or even eat candy offered if I know they are Hershey or Nestle or any of their other products. Nestle is also a very bad world citizen with it's water policies. It's just a bad bad company.

[Toutlaguerre]

09:34 AM on 10/08/2010

This is the reason why we need God's Kingdom. People need to stop exploiting children for money, labour , sex and what ever means they can to satisfy their greed for riches. I am quite sure that there are many adults that can do this kind of labour but obviously you can pay children much much less. The Bible says at "Psalm 127:3 that children are an inheritance. If the rich and greedy continue to exploit them what will become of the generations to come??