Love chocolate? Next time you bite into your favourite bar, consider this: what might have cost you just a dollar or two, may well have cost a child cocoa farm labourer in West Africa his or her entire childhood.

Chocolate is big business: about 70% of the cocoa beans used to make the world’s chocolate comes from West Africa. Harvesting cocoa beans is hard work and prices have declined on world markets in recent years. To curb costs, farmers traditionally use their children to help. But there is a sinister twist to this.

Child cocoa farm labourers

Criminal networks have been caught moving children across regions and international borders to work on cocoa farms. These children are forced to work long, backbreaking days on cocoa farms carrying heavy loads, and working with fire, chemicals or knives, with little or no protection. They receive little or no pay and most have no hope of ever going to school.

Over the last 10 years, the international media has begun to expose the use of child labour in the cocoa industry. Some media reports have claimed that in the most extreme cases, children as young as six are being forced to work 80-100 hours a week. Many are beaten to work harder and severely malnourished.

Who is to blame?

The Ivorian government has blamed the international cocoa industry for keeping prices too low to provide livelihoods for farmers. Global prices, led by cocoa exchanges in London and New York, have plummeted in recent years. This in turn puts West African farmers under pressure to increase their production and improve their incomes.

Manufacturers and exporters continue to make massive profits.

The Harkin-Engel Protocol

In September 2001, two US Congressmen (Harkin and Engel) lobbied the international chocolate industry to sign this voluntary protocol to publicly ensure cocoa production in the Ivory Coast and Ghana would become free of trafficking and forced child labour.

Part of the protocol requested that manufacturers inspect cocoa farms in these regions and then have their results independently verified to ensure that there was no forced child labour occurring. The deadline for these inspections was July 2005. The industry missed its deadline. It was extended until July 2008.

They missed it again.

What is the Australian chocolate industry doing about the situation?

World Vision's Don't Trade Lives campaign has asked Australian chocolate manufacturers for their cooperation in helping stop child exploitation in West Africa’s cocoa farming industry. They were asked to put together a detailed, time-bound and fully-costed plan of action by 1 December 2008.

Since August 2009, a number of chocolate manufacturers have moved to use ethically-sourced cocoa in the some of their chocolate products.

These decisions are an important first step in making ethical chocolate more accessible to Australian consumers. But there’s more that can be done.

“I sincerely hope that this sends a clear message to all other chocolate producers who are yet to take steps in certifying their supply chains,” said Tim Costello. We hope the entire market is made sweeter sooner with 100 percent of cocoa free of exploited labour.”

Although the Don’t Trade Lives campaign have been heartened by recent developments, there’s more work needed to ensure the chocolate industry meets the commitments of the Harkin-Engel protocol and stamps out the use of child labour in its products.

A question of responsibility

Major chocolate manufacturers and exporters have the power to stop the cycle of child exploitation and trafficking. They need to:

• commit to paying farmers a fair price for their cocoa
• support a range of community services managed by the cocoa growing communities 
• invest in community infrastructure to support social and economic development 
• ensure suppliers have access to sustainable production knowledge and practices 
• commit to participating in independely-audited ethical certification schemes to reassure consumers they are supporting ethical practices.

Be an informed chocolate consumer!

It's going to take time to eradicate child exploitation and trafficking in cocoa farms. However, as a community of informed consumers, we can make a difference:

• Tell chocolate manufacturers of the need to produce ethical chocolate, using cocoa that is independently certified to have been harvested without the use of forced, child or trafficked labour*
• Use your purchasing power to support ethical chocolate

Find out how you can demand ethical chocolate, take a look at our Good Chocolate Guide to Australia, and sign up to Don't Trade Lives to stay up-to-date with the campaign.

* This term does not seek to classify the use of other ingredients, such as palm oil.