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, mainly the Ivory Coast and Ghana. 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. World Vision even learned of one trafficker who smugled children into the Ivory Coast by faking a convoy of ambulances containing healthy children who were bandaged to fool authorities. These children are forced to work endless, backbreaking days on cocoa farms carrying heavy loads, working with fire, chemicals and 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. They 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?

Recently, World Vision's Don't Trade Lives campaign 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.

While the industry did deliver an open letter by this date, it was ‘light on for detail and heavy in rhetoric’ according to Tim Costello, World Vision Australia Chief Executive.

In other words, the chocolate industry has reneged on its pledge (The Harkin-Engel protocol) to stamp out child labour in favour of its own interests.  

A question of responsibility

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

• reassessing their supply chains to ensure products that retailers buy have not been unethically produced using the worst forms of child labour and human trafficking
• guaranteeing farmers a fair price for their cocoa
• publishing a time-bound plan of action to ensure their products are free of human exploitation

Next down the chain of command are retailers. They can:

• stock ‘ethical’ chocolate only
• convey to manufacturers that the Australian public will not tolerate buying goods which exploit children

Be an informed chocolate consumer!

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

• do not boycott your favourite brands of chocolate - this only hurts poor farming families more
• instead we should make it loud and clear to manufacturers that we demand ethically manufactured chocolate – free of child exploitation
• we can use our 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 stay updated with our campaign by signing up to Don't Trade Lives.