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V-Day’s Dark Side |
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For many, Valentine’s Day is all about chocolate. And unfortunately, that means big business for companies that sometimes profit – albeit indirectly - from forced child labor in West Africa.
West Africa grows 70% of the world's cocoa, but corporations of the global cocoa/chocolate trade - companies like Hershey's, Mars, Nestlé, Russell Stover, Cargill, and ADM - have done little to address this problem.
In the period 1900-1907, the world’s then leading chocolate manufacturer, Cadbury’s, was caught up in a scandal over their reliance on West African slave plantations for their cocoa. A century later, in 2000 and 2001, chocolate lovers around the world were again jolted when British and American journalists documented the enslavement of adolescent and teenage boys on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast. Most of the children come from Mali, Ivory Coast's poorer northern neighbor. Traffickers rely on the economic desperation of Malian families and entice naïve adolescents and teenagers with the promise of good jobs in Ivory Coast. Even the prospect of buying a new bicycle or modest scooter can be enough to motivate a boy to sign up for a season of hard work.
Later, once over the border and separated from their community or others who speak their language, the children are sold to cocoa farmers. Some farmers will pay the children a small sum at the end of the cocoa season. Some will not. But more importantly, some farmers will exploit the children’s vulnerability, forcing them to perform long, hard and dangerous work, while providing only minimal food and shelter. Some will beat and threaten those who try to escape, and at night lock the children in sheds or huts. It is these children, held captive and forced to work against their will, that are the focus of this ongoing crisis.
Since Ivory Coast alone produces 40% of the world's cocoa, its beans are mixed into almost every brand of mass-produced chocolate. Further, a handful of western corporations control approximately 85% of Ivorian cocoa exports. Therefore, the large corporations have both the responsibility and the opportunity to use their unmatched power in the cocoa industry to tackle this unacceptable situation.
In 2001, after six months of public and government pressure, representatives of the largest corporations in the cocoa and chocolate industry signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol, championed by Sen. Tom Harkin (IA), and Rep. Elliot Engel (NY), wherein the companies promised to work "wholeheartedly" to "eliminate the worst forms of child labor" and to create by June 2005 a certification system to verify that this was being accomplished.
The protocol gave the industry years of relief from pressure or scrutiny as they repeatedly assured the public that they were dedicated to solving the problem. Unfortunately, little has actually been accomplished in the last seven years. Even Sen. Harking and Rep. Engel had to publicly admit this when the industry missed the protocol's original July 2005 deadline.
Subsequently, Sen. Harkin and Rep. Engel have granted the cocoa/chocolate industry another three years – until July 2008 - to tackle the problem. However, as part of those negotiations with industry the demand for eliminating forced child labor was dropped. Instead there is only to be a monitoring operation. And that is intended to cover only half the cocoa grown in two countries: Ivory Coast and Ghana. Last year, the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) provided a comprehensive update and analysis of the lack of progress toward the goals of the protocol. In March, 2007 BBC TV documented that even some of the small projects held up by the industry as proof of their commitment to the children of the region, and of the progress made to date, in fact prove the opposite. The Department of Labor commissioned Tulane University’s Payson Center to study what is being done, and not done, to fulfill the Protocol’s obligations. You can read it here.
This winter ('07-'08) the journalist Cristian Parenti, writing for Fortune magazine, also traveled to Ivory Coast and also found little evidence of a serious effort to tackle the twin problems of forced child labor and chronic poverty among the regions cocoa growers.
Meanwhile, groups like the ILRF and Global Exchange have continued to push the industry. For example, Equal Exchange worked with them this past Halloween to distribute door-to-door 35,000 "Reverse Trick-or-Treat" cards nationwide to help educate the public about this overlooked issue. We also jointly drafted and pledged ourselves to a Commitment to Ethical Cocoa Sourcing that other organizations and businesses are encouraged to endorse. Already groups such as Global Witness and General Board of Global Ministries for The United Methodist Church have signed on.
A key demand we’ve been making is that the large corporations begin buying Fair Trade Certified™ cocoa, as it offers critical protections for workers and directly addresses the underlying problem of low cocoa prices and chronic poverty amongst cocoa farmers. Under Fair Trade standards, the farmers and co-operatives must abide by key covenants of the International Labor Organization, including those forbidding inappropriate child labor, and forced labor. Also, unlike the proposals in the Harkin-Engel Protocol, the Fair Trade system is up and running today in most cocoa growing regions, and enjoys popular support in consuming countries.
Also, through the third-party certification label that appears on the product right on the grocery store shelf Fair Trade gives the consumers – at the time of purchase – the information needed to make an informed choice.
Overall, Equal Exchange and our allies like the ILRF are disappointed both that the industry has refused to support Fair Trade through their cocoa sourcing, and that the Protocol is asking so much less of the chocolate industry than it did in the original 2001 agreement.
At Equal Exchange, all of our cocoa is sourced from Fair Trade Certified™, organic small farmer co-operatives in the Dominican Republic and Peru. Even the sugar is Fair Trade Certified™, and sourced from small-farmer co-ops in Costa Rica and Paraguay. Instead of giving traditional chocolates this Valentine’s Day, consider supporting Fair Trade practices in the cocoa industry by offering your loved ones Equal Exchange organic chocolates.
Have something to say about child labor in the cocoa industry? Click on these links to share your views with Sen. Harkin, Rep. Engel, and the Chocolate Manufacturers of America and encourage your organization to endorse the Commitment to Ethical Cocoa Sourcing (to do so contact Tim.Newman@ilfr.org.)
Feel free to reprint this article in your newsletter or blog. We only ask that you attribute the article to Equal Exchange.
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