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 practise first reached a wider public in 2001 with a British television documentary , Slavery made by Kate Blewett and Brian Woods. This claimed that 90% of Ivory Coast cocoa plantations use forced labour. A ship was found near West Africa allegedly carrying child slaves.
Another reporter, Sudarsan Raghavan working for Knight Ridder, travelled deep into the Ivory Coast where farms used child slaves. [3] He claimed the Ivorian government is involved in the practice as are the farmers and chocolate manufacturers in America and Europe and 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.
Mars buy free trade cocoa as a matter of policy.
The Chocolate Manufacturers Association, a trade group for American chocolate makers, acknowledges that slaves are harvesting cocoa on some Ivory Coast farms. [4]
Obtaining Fairly-Traded Chocolate
Fairly-Traded Chocolate are the only chocolate products at present which are guaranteed not to contain any sourced from a slave plantation. A full range of high quality fairly traded chocolate products are available to consumers through shops in the UK. In the USA and elsewhere fairly traded chocolate products are available online. This link has more information about how to get fairly traded chocolate online.
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