Content provided in partnership with
Slaves to chocolate: thousands of boys toil on Ivory Coast cacao farms
Current Events, April 26, 2002
YAMOUSSOUKRO, Ivory Coast -- Mmmm ... chocolate. Sweet, mouthwatering, delicious. Chocolate is so yummy that Americans spend $13 billion a year buying chocolate cookies, chocolate candies, chocolate ice cream, chocolate cakes, and other chocolate treats.
But the story of chocolate is anything but sweet. According to Free the Slaves, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C., thousands of young boys toil under slave-like conditions on cacao plantations in the West African nation of Ivory Coast (Cote d'Ivoire) to harvest the cacao (k [inverted e]-KAY-oh) bean, the main ingredient in chocolate. (Cocoa, a chocolate powder, is also made from cacao beans.)
- Most Popular Articles in News
- The Ten Best Laptop bags
- Tata plans cheapest-ever car for Indian market
- GLOBALIZATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF THE THIRD WORLD
- Corn is good for you; Corn is not only a tasty treat, but also a cereal that ...
- THE 50 BEST STYLISH HANDBAGS TO CARRY
- More »
Aly Diabate, from the country of Mali, was 12 years old when a slave trader promised him $150 and a bicycle for working on a cacao farm in Ivory Coast, where 43 percent of the world's cacao is grown. Instead, Aly was sold for about $35 to a cacao farmer, who regularly beat the boy with a bicycle chain and branches from a cacao tree. "The beatings were part of my life," Aly told a reporter for Knight Ridder Newspapers in 2001, after he was freed by local authorities and returned to his Mali village.
Aly described 12-hour days working in scorching heat. To get the 400 beans it takes to make about a pound of chocolate, Aly and the other boys he worked with needed to hack ten pods from cacao trees with machetes. They then sliced open the pods, scooped out the seeds, or beans, placed them in heaps, and covered them so that the beans could ferment for about seven to ten days. Then the beans were dried in the sun and loaded into bags to be sold and shipped to chocolate manufacturers around the world for processing into chocolate products.
Because of his age and small size, Aly struggled to carry the large sacks of cacao beans. "Anytime they loaded you with bags and you fell while carrying them, nobody helped you. Instead, they beat you again until you picked up [the bag] again."
At the end of the day, Aly and the others were locked in a windowless room to sleep on wooden boards. On good days, they ate burned bananas and corn paste. A tin can served as their toilet.
As chocolate is not part of the traditional African diet, Aly has never tasted the fruits of his labor. "I don't even know what chocolate is," he said.
Modern-Day Slavery
The U.S. State Department says about 15,000 children between the ages of 9 and 12 have been sold into forced labor on cotton, coffee, and cacao plantations in Ivory Coast in recent years. Slavery is illegal in Ivory Coast, as it is around the world. Ivory Coast officials concede that child slaves work on some of the country's 600 cacao farms but say that the problem is a relatively small, albeit growing, one.
Cacao farm owner Sekongo Nagalouro doesn't think it's a problem at all. Nagalouro paid a trafficker for the boys who work in his fields, but he doesn't consider them slaves. "Maybe there are some people who think this is modern-day slavery, but I don't think so," Nagalouro said.
If Nagalouro got a good price for his cacao, he said, he would pay his workers. But a good price is not likely. Because of overproduction, the world price of cacao is at a ten-year low. Many people say the low price of cacao forces growers to try to cut costs to maintain profits, leading to an increase in child labor and slavery. The cacao trade drives about one-third of Ivory Coast's economy.
"Poverty can propel people to drastic measures to survive, and consequently, children are victimized in the process," said Anita Sheth, of the humanitarian group Save the Children.
A Sweet Success
Last October, the chocolate industry, with the support of the U.S. government and world labor organizations, released a protocol (plan) to help end child exploitation on cacao plantations by the year 2005. In addition, the Ivory Coast government vowed to crack down on child trafficking and more closely monitor cacao plantations.
For Kevin Bales, the director of Free the Slaves, the protocol is a small, but sweet success. "It's a historic breakthrough that an entire industry has banded together and formed a partnership to eradicate slavery," said Bales. "What's unique about the protocol is that it includes all stakeholders working in collaboration--the cocoa industry, U.S. and Ivory Coast governments, [and labor organizations and nongovernmental organizations]. I'm confident that the cocoa industry is on board to make a difference."
Change can't come soon enough for Mohammed Maigo, a government official in Mali, where many of the cacao child slaves originate: "The blood of African children is in our bars of chocolate...."
CONSIDER THIS ... some people have proposed boycotting, or refusing to purchase, chocolate products as a way of forcing chocolate manufacturers to stop buying cacao from farms that use slave labor. Do you think this would alleviate the problem of forced child labor or make it worse? Explain your answer.
Get Talking
Ask students: What is slavery? Tell students that according to Free the Slaves, there are approximately 27 million people enslaved around the world. Where might slavery exist in the world today?
