Child Slave Labor in Cocoa Unearthed in BBC Program

Panorama looked into the cocoa industry in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, two countries that produce 60% of the world's cocoa and where more than 10 million people survive off the industry.

25 Mar 2010 --- An investigative program aired on the BBC last night (March 24) has found evidence of human trafficking and child slave labour in the supply chain that delivers chocolate around the world, including the UK. The program entitled “Chocolate The Bitter Truth” looked into the cocoa industry in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, two countries that produce 60% of the world's cocoa and where more than 10 million people survive off the industry.

BBC’s Panorama program also found that even chocolate marketed as Fairtrade cannot rule out that that, despite having standards and auditing in place, there may still be a possibility of child labour - as defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in the supply chain. Because of the many hands that the cocoa passes through, traceability cannot be guaranteed.

Panorama said it has seen documents which show that in September 2009, the Fairtrade cocoa co-operative in Ghana which supplies Cadbury and Divine suspended seven out of 33 of their cocoa farming communities in one of the major growing regions after they were found to be using the worst forms of child labour. In a statement to Panorama, Cadbury said it had not been supplied with any cocoa beans from any of the seven communities in question either before or during the suspension. It said: "The fact that child labour issues were identified…is evidence the Fairtrade certification process is working."

The BBC Panorama journalist concluded: “I asked myself at the beginning of this journey: ‘Do we pay a fair price for our chocolate?’ Actually the answer lies here in the reality of the situation in West Africa and the cocoa farms here, and the grim reality of life where they don’t have shoes to wear, they don’t have electricity and running water. And all that begs another question ‘Are we in the west prepared to pay a little bit more for our chocolate so that they can enjoy a decent standard of living and more importantly so they don’t have to use child labour?’”

Nestlé, which recently began offering Fairtrade Kit Kat responded to the program with the following statement:

“We share the concerns around child labour issues in the developing world and we are committed to eliminating all forms of exploitation of children. We have been working for many years in the Ivory Coast, one of the poorest countries in the world, on initiatives to address social issues including child labour.”

The company recently announced additional investment of £65 million over the next ten years through our global Cocoa Plan to address the key issues that the farming communities we work with face. “As part of this we are proud to be working with the Fairtrade Foundation who share our long–term commitment to improving conditions for Ivory Coast farmers and understand the challenges this involves.”

The company said that consumers can be assured that the cocoa used in Nestlé's Fairtrade Kit Kat has been sourced from certified cooperatives that are independently audited against Fairtrade Standards, and that are committed to using the benefits of Fairtrade to improve life for the farmers, their children and the wider community.

The Fairtrade Foundation in the UK said that the program raised a series of questions about whether Fairtrade organisations had systems and structures in place to identify and prevent children working on West African cocoa farms that supply high street chocolate manufacturers.

Panorama clearly stated: “Fairtrade can only take action because its farms are traceable and open to scrutiny. Most are not.”

This explicit validation of Fairtrade’s audit systems should not detract from the central point of Panorama’s findings, the Foundation said. And that is the continued serious problem of child labour and child trafficking in West Africa’s cocoa industry.

The Fairtrade movement has already redoubled its efforts to eradicate child labour in the world’s most poverty stricken regions and is investigating some of the findings highlighted by BBC Panorama’s report.

“Child labour is caused by deep seated poverty exacerbated by unjust terms of world trade, conflict, drought and extreme weather conditions triggering forced migration. This is the reality that those on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and Ghana have to deal with on a daily basis. The cocoa market continues to work against the interests of growers in West Africa and other cocoa producing regions which provide the environment for child labour to flourish. Cocoa prices in real terms have slumped in the past 40 years from $2.50 per lb in 1970 to less than $0.80 per lb in 2008 according to Food & Agriculture Agency of the United Nations despite recent speculative commodity price hike,” the Association said.

Thanks to access to the international Fairtrade market, over 50,000 poor farmers and workers in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) have been able to improve their lives with tangible economic and social benefits including education, the Association reported.

Harriet Lamb, Fairtrade Foundation Executive Director, says: “Fairtrade is part of the solution to alleviate deep poverty underlying child labour. And we call on the chocolate industry to extend its involvement with Fairtrade - to pay a fair price to farmers and to work directly with them to tackle huge challenges farmers and their communities are struggling to overcome. We can’t guarantee there won’t be problems but we can guarantee a better deal for cocoa farmers and a system to tackle the problems where and when we find them.”

The Fairtrade Foundation said it hopes the programme will be seen as a call to action to chocolate companies, cocoa traders, international agencies, national governments, non-governmental organisations, consumers and those within the Fairtrade movement - into working harder and more constructively to tackle poverty and end child labour.