Chocolate Kills Children
I love chocolate. But I’m willing to put that aside for something much larger.
More than 40% of the world’s supply of cocoa comes from the West Coast of Africa (the Ivory Coast). There, children are regularly sold into slavery to work the cocoa farms. From the age of 12, young boys are ripped from their families and forced to work under inhumane conditions and abuse. The time has come for this barbarism to end.
Below are several ways for you to actively participate in the extermination of the slave trade, especially in all chocolate goods. The list isn’t exhaustive – it barely scratches the surface. It is up to you to come up with new and innovative ways to engage your community in ending this global atrocity. Please leave a note to tell me how things are going.
Read your history. One of history’s greatest abolitionists was William Wilberforce. In order to raise awareness of the moral and ethical sin of slavery in England, Wilberforce mobilized his community to boycott all goods produced by the slave trade. While the efficacy of any boycott is always questionable, if the motivation is to raise awareness of an issue – sometimes a noisy, difficult protest is the best way to wake up a generation of zombies.
Don’t discriminate. In order for our voices to be heard, the entire chocolate industry must feel the impact of global slavery. Let your baker know, your favorite restaurant, your neighborhood grocery store, that great local coffee shop.
Take up the mightier sword. Write your Congressman, your Senator, your Governor, your Mayor. Write the heads of Toll House, Dunkin Hines, Mars, Hershey’s, Little Debbie herself. Don’t afford anyone the excuse of “we just didn’t know.” Know what you are asking for. Make sure you include in your letters ideas for legislation forbidding the importation of slavers goods. Or ideas for packaging to guaranty that chocolate is slave free.
If you must indulge. Do so wisely. Buy fair trade, or find a new desert. Some of you restaurant owners will be dismayed at the price of a fairly traded product – let your customers know what happened to their favorite desert, or why the price of that mouse just went up.
Be aggressive. This is slavery we are talking about. The point isn’t chocolate, the point is every child’s right to life. The point isn’t your sweet tooth, the point is every human being was made in the image of God.
Some Web Resources:
Stop the Traffik
International Justice Mission
HumanTrafficking.org
Not For Sale
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When we talk about an issue as important as this one, it is important to be as factually accurate without distorting and stereotyping. Unfortunately, you ignored the facts when you stated that, “children are regularly sold into slavery to work the cocoa farms. From the age of 12, young boys are ripped from their families and forced to work under inhumane conditions and abuse.”
In fact, cocoa is grown on more than two million family-run farms in West Africa. On the vast majority of these farms, children help out as members of the family.
Without question, there are serious issues: children helping out instead of attending school, child injuries due to kids undertaking unsafe tasks.
What’s needed are programs that preserve the cocoa farming family structure in which children help out and learn from their parents, while at the same time ensuring that this “helping out” doesn’t injure the child or interfere with their education.
One organization – the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) – is working with cocoa farming families worldwide. WCF-supported programs are helping cocoa farmers earn more (25 to 55 percent) for their crop, through more effective, sustainable farming techniques and co-operative development. The WCF’s “farmer field schools” approach empowers farmers through education – creating lasting, widespread change.
Nearly 70 chocolate companies and trade associations (including my employer – the National Confectioners Association) are members of the WCF.
To learn more about the World Cocoa Foundation and its members, visit http://www.worldcocoa.org
Susan Smith
National Confectioners Association
Susan,
While I respect your opinion, it is you who do not fully understand the facts.
According to the ongoing findings of the Ministerium für Öffentliche Dienste und Beschäftigung (a research and statistical analysis firm):
“In Côte d’Ivoire, an immigration country for work-seekers from the comparatively poorer neighbouring countries, child trafficking and exploitative forms of child labour are widespread. The children, both from neighbouring countries and from villages within the country, are placed with employers through intermediaries. Boys work mainly in the cocoa plantations and girls in urban private households. There they are unprotected, are physically and sometimes also sexually exploited, and receive only a low wage, if they receive a wage at all. As well as suffering physical and psychological damage, their lack of school education limits the children’s future opportunities. Legal conventions for the protection of children have not been effectively implemented to date. The children affected have hardly any possibility to escape this situation and to learn basic skills to improve their lives. The threat of an embargo on cocoa from Côte d’Ivoire on the American market unless it is certified by 2008 that the cocoa is produced without child labour lends the project particular significance. Côte d’Ivoire is the world market leader, producing forty per cent of the world’s cocoa. Cocoa is vital to the Ivorian economy and to more than 600,000 family firms.”
A recent report by Tulane University found that “If a child has been trafficked, the child’s presence in a household may be explained by “family ties” even if the child is not related.”
I urge you and your organization to pursue just, equitable and legal treatment of this plague in the Ivory Coast. I urge you to pursue agreements with cocoa producing farms and countries with third party oversight (IJM, UNICEF, etc) to insure that the cocoa produced is “slave free.”
This suggestion is the same one your employers and the companies they represent promised to enforce by July 1st of 2008. Madam, this deadline is past and gone and yet the children are still bought and sold.
I will continue to champion the cause of these voiceless until they are heard.
Thank you for posting this on your website. I was wanting to write something lighthearted about Wm. Wilberforce and his favorite form of chocolate, but your site change my blog’s direction entirely. This is not a well-known problem, and it needs to be addressed. I’ve posted something about the problem at myfavoritevegetable.com and will write about it in another blog, soon. It is encouraging to see that it is a fellow believer in Messiah who is speaking out. Blessings