Child Slavery and the Chocolate Industry
Forced Child Labor is Widely Used in the Chocolate Industry
Everyone loves chocolate, but have you ever wondered how the seeds of the cocoa tree eventually become your favorite bar of chocolate? The truth is the process is highly exploitative, with western countries gaining wide access to low priced chocolate at the expense of those living in developing countries. Most cocoa beans come from small, impoverished farms in West Africa. In order to remain viable, these farms often resort to using child slavery.
70% of cocoa is produced in West Africa, primarily in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, with 90% of farmers in those countries relying on cocoa as their primary crop. The vast majority of cocoa is produced on small-scale, family farms. The process of cocoa bean cultivation is highly labor intensive. The cocoa tree itself is very fragile and requires constant attention. The flowers of the cocoa tree bear cocoa pods, which are cut from the tree. Each cocoa pod contains approximately 20 seeds. These seeds are the actual cocoa beans. Once the beans are removed from the pods, they must be ripened, dried, cleaned, then packaged. The farmers then sell their cocoa beans to intermediaries who then sell the beans to exporters in the west(Make Chocolate Fair, 2020).
To understand why small scale cocoa farms resort to using child slaves, it is necessary to understand the economics behind the chocolate industry. The chocolate industry is thriving, with the global retail value of chocolate reaching nearly 140 billion dollars in 2019 (ResearchAndMarkets, 2019). Most of the profits go to multinational chocolate corporations based in the west. Examining the global supply chain, only 6.6% of the value of a ton of cocoa sold goes to the cocoa farmers, while 35.2% goes to chocolate manufacturers, and 44.2% goes to retailers (Make Chocolate Fair, 2020). While profits for the major chocolate corporations have soared since the 1980s, many cocoa farmers live in abject poverty. One reason for this is the low world market price for the cocoa bean, another reason is that trade structures often force farmers to sell their beans to intermediaries at 50% of the world market price (Make Chocolate Fair, 2020). In order to reduce costs, many cocoa farms use child labor.
The International Labour Organization defines child labor as,”…work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.” The ILO considers child slavery as one of the worst forms of child labor. Article 3 of ILO Convention №182 advocates for the elimination of, ”all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labour…”
The statistics are staggering. In Ghana and the Ivory Coast 300,000 children work on cocoa farms (Mckinney, Hill, & Hania, 2015). Approximately 60% of children providing unpaid labor are under 14 years of age. It is estimated that 15% of the children working on the farms would be considered slaves. Approximately 109,000 children work in the cocoa industry in the Ivory Coast, with an estimated 10,000 of those children being victims of human trafficking(Sos & Comm, 2018).
It is important to note that not all work performed by children is considered child labor. Work that is not detrimental to a child’s health and development and does not affect the child’s ability to go to school may be beneficial for the child. This is especially relevant when examining the cocoa industry in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.
Many of the small-scale cocoa farms are family run enterprises. It is normal for children to help their parents on the farm once they are done with school, working on the farm may offer the child numerous benefits. These benefits may include the child earning pocket money as well as developing skills and knowledge that may be useful in the future (Mckinney, Hill, & Hania, 2015). Completely banning children from working on family cocoa farms could lead to many negative outcomes. Banning school age children and children aged 16–18 years who are not in formal education would hamper their ability to provide vital income to their families. Certain high risk groups of children, if unable to work on cocoa farms, may be forced into even more exploitative forms of labor, such as small-scale mining, street work, or sex work (University of Liverpool, 2019). The issue for humanitarian organizations monitoring child slavery is differentiating between a child voluntarily engaging in non-exploitative work and an exploited child forced to provide labor.
What are the major multinational chocolate corporations doing about child slavery? 20 years ago the major chocolate corporations Hershey, Nestle, and Mars vowed to rid their industry of child slavery. Unfortunately this did not happen. A major issue in eradicating child labor in the chocolate industry is the inability of the major corporations to trace which farms their cocoa beans originated from. Mars can trace 24% of their cocoa to farms while Hershey and Nestle can trace less than 50% of their supply of cocoa (Whoriskey & Siegel, 2019). If these corporations cannot trace where their cocoa comes from, they cannot be sure if child labor was utilized. A lack of transparency when it comes to the global supply chain of cocoa is the reason why eliminating child slavery will be difficult. This phenomena is not exclusive to the chocolate industry. Clothing is another major industry in which a lack of transparency in the global supply chain hides the fact that a lot of the clothing we in the west wear is manufactured through highly exploitative labor practices.
If you would like to reduce child slavery, consider donating to one of the following organizations dedicated to ending child slavery:
Action against Child Exploitation
International Initiative to end Child Labor
Key Vocabulary:
Harkin Engel Protocol- “A Protocol for the growing and processing of cocoa beans and their derivative products in a manner that complies with ILO Convention 182 concerning the prohibition and immediate action for the elimination of the worst forms of child labor and adult forced labor on cocoa farms in West Africa.” In 2001, several major chocolate companies pledged to completely eliminate the use of child labor by 2020, this unfortunately never happened.
Fair Trade Certification- A product with fair trade certification was manufactured,”… according to rigorous social, environmental, and economic standards.” Fair trade certification is meant to protect workers and the environment as well as promote sustainability.
Rainforest Alliance Certification- “The seal means that the certified product or ingredient was produced using methods that support the three pillars of sustainability: social, economic, and environmental. Independent, third-party auditors — critical to the integrity of any certification program — evaluate farmers against requirements in all three areas before awarding or renewing certification.”
Global Supply Chain- “Global supply chains are networks that can span across multiple continents and countries for the purpose of sourcing and supplying goods and services. Global supply chains involve the flow of information, processes and resources across the globe. A global supply chain utilises low-cost country sourcing and refers to the procurement of products and services from countries with lower labour rates and reduced production costs than that of the home country.”
Citations:
Make Chocolate Fair. (2020). Cocoa Prices and Income of Farmers. Retrieved from Make Chocolate Fair: https://makechocolatefair.org/issues/cocoa-prices-and-income-farmers-0
Make Chocolate Fair. (2020). Cocoa Production in a Nutshell. Retrieved from Make Chocolate Fair: https://makechocolatefair.org/issues/cocoa-production-nutshell
Mckinney, S., Hill, R., & Hania, H. (2015). Child Slavery and Child Labor. Pastoral Review, 54–60.
ResearchAndMarkets. (2019, June 28). $139.94 Billion Chocolate Market — Global Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2019–2024. Retrieved from Cision PR Newswire: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/139-94-billion-chocolate-market---global-growth-trends-and-forecast-2019-2024--300876212.html
Sos, Y., & Comm, M. (2018). Case Study of The Ethical Issues of Child Labor. Jurnal Bisnis dan Kajian Strategi Manajemen, 1–10.
University of Liverpool. (2019). Clothes, Chocolate, and Children: Realizing the Transparency Dividend. Liverpool: University of Liverpool.
Whoriskey, P., & Siegel, R. (2019, June 5). Cocoa’s Child Laborers. Retrieved from The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershey-nestle-mars-chocolate-child-labor-west-africa/