Child
Rights Glossary : F
FAIR TRADE CHOCOLATE
Hundreds of thousands of children are involved in the production
of cocoa, the primary ingredient of chocolate. They are often
working in the most abusive conditions. Work on cocoa plantations
is hard and unfit for children. Children are forced to work in
extreme heat for many hours conducting backbreaking physical labour.
Often this work is forced upon the children by their parents,
by poverty or by slave traders.
In the Ivory Coast, for example, young children – mainly
from Mali - have been found on the plantations, sold as slaves
by traffickers and now subjected to untold hours of labour and
cruel punishment, without the chance of freedom. There are an
estimated 200,000 children working on the plantations in the Ivory
Coast, of which 15,000 are slaves. None receive a proper education.
All have bleak prospects for their futures.
This problem is found the world over wherever cocoa is farmed
from West Africa to South and South-East Asia to Brazil. The problem
is so prevalent in Indonesia, for example, that it has, in the
past, been threatened by importing countries with the institution
of a “no child labour” label for chocolate produced
with its cocoa. At least 700,000 children help to maintain the
350,000 hectares of family-owned cocoa plantations in the country.
The biggest chocolate producers in the world, from Nestle to
Cadbury, help maintain this practice by buying cocoa made from
child labour. They purchase the cocoa from exploitative traders,
middle-men or government agents who artificially deflate the price
of cocoa to they pay to the farmers - the typical farmer receives
less than one penny for every chocolate bar sold for US$0.60.
This, along with highly unstable prices and non-environmentally
sustainable farming practices drives farmers to seek only short-term
profits, causing them to turn to their or other people’s
children, whether they want work or not.
For more details, see Initiative
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