This post is a series of reports about the exploitation of children on cocoa farms in West Africa. Each article includes a striking video.
Children working on cocoa farms in West Africa, especially in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, often face severe exploitation and danger rather than simple “helping on the family farm.” Research for the U.S. Department of Labor estimates that roughly 1.5–1.6 million children in these two countries are engaged in hazardous cocoa work, including using sharp machetes, carrying heavy loads, and handling pesticides and agrochemicals without protection. Many of these children work long hours, miss school, and some are trafficked from neighboring countries like Mali and Burkina Faso with false promises of pay. The underlying drivers are deep rural poverty, very low farmgate prices for cocoa, lack of accessible schooling, and weak child protection systems, which together make children’s labor the coping mechanism that keeps smallholder farms afloat.
Poverty forces many families to make choices in order for their families to survive, for example children are enslaved or trafficked to work on cocoa fields out of necessity. Yet majority of cocoa farmers still do not earn a living income while major chocolate brands hold millions of dollars in profits from the cocoa industry.
It is an open secret that child labour is rampant throughout the supply chains of major chocolate brands like Nestle, Mars and Ferrero. Despite international guidelines and targets to eradicate child labour, a lack of political will and lack of strict corporate legal responsibility enables the continued use of child labour.
For each article there is an accompanying video segment reveal the dark side of the chocolate industry and how child labour is ignored.
Share this post with law and policy makers and for deeper engagement, donate to and / or partner with organizations working directly in West African cocoa communities like the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) and sign and share campaigns that pressure major companies and governments to pay living incomes and enforce import bans on cocoa produced with child labor, such as petitions targeting Hershey, Nestlé, Mars, and other global brands.
Ghana Grows Our Cocoa, So Why Can’t It Make Chocolate? | Big Business
Business Insider
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X7wAKMNBXI
Business Insider explains the history of the colonization of cocoa and how this one-way supply of cocoa to Europe still remains today, keeping cocoa farmers at the bottom of the supply chain. Despite setting floor prices and some farmers taking home more money, this set price represents only a small fraction of the sales of multinational corporations, which some corporations are still not paying. In Ghana, free zone enclaves were established where there are tax breaks and free duty on the importation of manufacturing parts. The aim is to enable domestic manufacturing to add value to the domestic economy. However, it is difficult for domestic manufacturers, especially outside these zones, to even procure cocoa beans or having to import other ingredients, like diary and sugar, to produce a finished chocolate bar. Despite setbacks domestic manufacturers have began to process and manufacture intermediate products like cocoa cutter, cocoa liquor and cocoa powder, but not finished bars. Business Insider explains that the industry is set to grow, but the benefits are flowing only to big companies.
Chocolate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Last Week Tonight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwHMDjc7qJ8
This John Oliver segment brings humor to a dark situation in the cocoa industry. Millions of children on Halloween are excited to dig into their Halloween chocolates and candies, but the farmers who harvest the cocoa for these chocolates have never tried the finished product because they cannot afford to. It is noted that 73-90% of cocoa farms do not earn a living income. An hourglass is used to explain how majority of the chocolate companies and a small number of cocoa processers, which hold over half of the world’s chocolate, create massive disparities in who reaps the benefits from cocoa. Many cocoa farmers have tried to increase earning potential by growing more cocoa or by growing cocoa on protected government forest land, but what is left behind is a desolate skeleton forest with unworkable land. It is noted that young children are enslaved or trafficked to work on cocoa farms that supply major chocolate companies. A Nestle executive was noted saying that he helped a farmer when he was 12 and it was a fun activity that he didn’t need to do, he later admits that the farmers and the child labourers are poor and do not get paid enough. What this executive fails to realize is that these children are working on cocoa farms not by freedom of choice but are doing so to survive. This John Oliver segment highlights the lack of will and effort by corporations to keep promises to eradicate child labour. It is stated that corporations will only care exactly as much as they are forced to.
Iconic chocolate brand linked to child labor in Ghana
CBS News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYapy2GJN9E
This CBC News segment highlights the lackluster efforts by chocolate giant, Mars, to fight against child labour in their coca supply chains. Their efforts are said to be a ticking the box exercise, or lip service, in which they repeatedly fail to meet targets and deadlines. The segment highlights the story of a 15-year-old girl who has been working since the age of 5 on the cocoa farms used by Mars. It was noted that Mars employees have tried to intimidate the girl to retract her statements about the working conditions on the cocoa fields. It was also noted that in 2022 Mars made over USD$45 billion in sales, yet small family farms could not, and still cannot, afford to send their children to school because of lack of transportation of high school fees.
A Dutch chocolate company’s fight to end illegal child labor
PBS News Hour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6QIlhFvyE8
This PBS News Hour segment highlights Tony’s Chocoloneley and their goal of 100% slave free chocolate. It notes Tony’s practice of traceability, paying premiums to cocoa farmers to modernize production and help them get out of poverty. Tony’s working relationship with Barry Callebeaut, cocoa processing giant, is noted as working within the system to change and improve traceability and accountability.
Thank you Eshanee Singh for your research and reporting for this article
#ChildLabor
#ChildLabour (non‑US spelling hits UK/EU audiences)
#EndChildLabor / #EndChildLabour
#ChildSlavery
#CocoaFarming
#CocoaIndustry
#ChocolateIndustry
#EthicalChocolate
#SlaveFreeChocolate / #ChildLaborFreeChocolate
#HumanRights
#FairTradeChocolate
#SustainableCocoa
#EndChildExploitation
INVISIBLE CHILDREN / KARA / KIDS AT RISK ACTION
