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Child labour in the Chocolate Industry

4. Who are these children and how old are they?

7. What are the conditions like for farmers? (how much are they paid, what equipment do they use? Why do they have difficulty improving their condition? What hours do they work? Who buys their cocoa? How do they support their families?)

These children live in areas of extreme poverty, their families need help, so they work at a young age. Some children end up on the cocoa farms as the traffickers tell them the job pays well. Other children are ‘sold’ to these traffickers by their family. Their family doesn't know of the dangerous work and the fact that there is often no supplies for an education. Most of the labouring children are abducted from their villages by traffickers in neighbouring African, such as Burkina Faso and Mali, which could be arguably the poorest two countries in the world. Once the children are on the cocoa farms, they may not see their families ever again. Most children working on the farms are usually around the age of 12-16, but a handful of reporters have been in some areas where children as young as five are working. On top of all this, around 40% of these children are girls, as in some cultures it is seen less valuable to educate

5. What is the work that children do in this industry?

3. Why are child workers used?

example of a child cocoa slave.

Yaku is from the same farm, and also from Burkina Faso. In his case, his mother brought him when his father died. Yaku insists that he is 16 although he look much younger. He small legs bare large machette scars, from the hard hours of clearing the bush, but the emotional scars seem much deeper. "I wish i could just go to school" he says. "To learn how to read and write". Yaku has never spent a day in school.

On a farm in Ivory coast, Abdul, a child slave at only 10 years old has survived 3 years of work. He earns no money for his work, only food, the torn clothes on his back and the occasional tip from the farm owner. He's from neighbouring Burkina Faso and when his father died, a stranger brought him to Ivory coast. He says that if he had a choice, he wouldn't work. Abdul has never eaten chocolate, telling us he doesn't even know what the cocoa he harvest is for.

The Children of the cocoa industry have to work with machetes, agricultural chemicals and some children even have to use chainsaws. When children use machetes, they have to climb trees and cut open pods. These knives are large, heavy and dangerous but are the standard tools for these children, which violates international labour laws and a UN convention on eliminating the worst forms of. With every strike, there is a high risk of slicing open their skin, and this is shown as majority of children have scars on their hands, arms, legs or shoulders from the machetes. Once the children have cut down enough pods to fill a sack full, they drag this 100 pound bag through the forest. A former cocoa slave named Aly Diabate said, “some of the bags were taller than me. It took two people to put the bag on my head. And when you didn't hurry you were beaten.” These children as young as 10 have to spray the pods with harsh chemicals without wearing any protective clothing.

Children are used in the chocolate industry because of market demand and culture. The employers prefer to hire children because they can be paid lower than adults or not even paid at all. In these cases, children are trafficked into Western African cocoa farms and forced to work without pay. The farm owners using child labor give the children the cheapest food available, such as bananas and corn paste. In some cases, children sleep on wooden planks in small windowless buildings with infested water and no clean bathrooms. Culture and tradition is another influence on the idea that's its okay for a child to be working because there not many opportunities for children even with education, so parents think labour is seen as more valuable and productive

1. What is the Harkin/Engel protocol?

The conditions for farmers are quite harsh as they earn less than $2 per day, use dangerous tools, have difficulty improving their conditions because of lack of supplies, work long hours, sell cocoa for cheap to big companies, and support their families just on the cocoa profit. Cocoa farmers earn, on average, less than $2 per day. This income rate is below the poverty line, and doesn't seem to make sense as millions of chocolate bars are sold every day. Chocolate is made from cocoa, so without the cocoa farmers we wouldn't have chocolate. So why aren’t they getting paid more? This is the universal question, and every thinks there is the simple solution of the chocolate companies paying them more. But this isn’t the case. Rather than trying to set price controls that often fail we should be trying to help them on a farming level, with different training programs. Industry-supported programs help with matters like losing crops due to, outdated farming techniques, disease and other income-related issues. It’s these programs that demonstrates how farmer’s incomes can be drastically increased in a maintainable method, by tackling the base causes.

Also known as the cocoa Protocol, The Harkin/ Engel Protocol is an international agreement with the objective to end the worst forms of child labour. The main creators were Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Eliot Engel (hint how the protocol got its name) and in 2001Eliot Engel presented a legislative modification to an agriculture bill. The modification was to give the U.S. FDA (food & Drug Administration) $250,000 to create labelling that indicates whether no child slave labor was used in any part of the cocoa process. Harkin and Engel organized with the cocoa industry to create the Harkin/Engel Protocol which was officially signed in September of 2001.

2. Where are child workers used in the chocolate industry?

6. Why is the use of child labour seen as a problem?

Child labour is a huge problem as it is harming the physical and mental health and development of children, preventing them from having a normal childhood with an education. The fact that child labour is not just in the chocolate industry but most manufacturing industries shows how wide-spread this matter is. Statistically speaking, 150 million children are working in hazardous settings and more than 1 million children each year will be victims of human traffickers. On top of that, this ‘child labour’ often becomes ‘child slavery’, where children are forced to work, not paid and are given the cheapest necessities but this is still not including the necessity of an education. Without education, these children cannot escape the poverty cycle. If all you did for the majority of your life was harvesting cocoa pods, do you think you would be able to get a well paying job? Child labour is a huge problem, not only because they are children in hazardous environments working with dangerous tools, but because of the lack of basic necessitates and violating many human rights laws. If child labour continues, the poverty cycle wont stand a chance of being broken.

The child workers of the chocolate industry are used in the growing stage of the production. They are used to harvest the cocoa (cacao) bean, which grows in tropical climates, narrowing the potential child laboring regions to West Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This practice has only been discovered in the recent years as a handful of establishments and reporters have exposed this issue to the public. This extensive problem is not just limited to the west African, as these farms supply cocoa to National companies such as Hershey’s, Nestlé, and Mars... Exposing the industry’s direct association to the harshest forms of child labor, slavery, and human trafficking.

8. How can they be helped by “Fairtrade” or other similar groups?

Where cocoa is grown

Machetes, chainsaws, toxic chemicals are just some of the dangerous equipment that farmers have to work with. They also have equipment such as inefficient seeds and limited planting materials meaning that farmers are harvesting from old trees that produce low yields. This incomplete knowledge of new, more efficient farming techniques reduce the farmer’s income. This is also the main reason that farmers struggle to improve their conditions as they face challenges that make it hard to understand that cocoa farming has the potential to bring remarkable financial benefit– in areas where economic chances are often rare. Absence of organization amongst farmers limit their ability to buy cheaper supplies, access useful marketing knowledge or ensure a superior price for their cocoa. These cocoa farmers can work from anywhere around 80-100 hours a week. These are long hours for even an adult, but children are working these hours as well. Farmers sell their beans to small traders. These traders can visit multiple different farmers, looking for the best quality. In a second stage, buyers sell these beans to wholesalers, who will re-sell them to exporters. At the other side of the spectrum, cocoa beans farmers' cooperatives sell cocoa beans directly to exporters or sometimes even directly exported by the co-operative. Nearly two million families in West Africa rely on cocoa farming to provide a living. Yet incomplete knowledge keeps many families from realizing the crop’s true economic potential. In West Africa, organizations help these families earn more for their cocoa. They use “farmer field schools” a nine-month training course for farmers to learn how they can improve their yields – and in turn earn more money.

Fairtrade helps promote stable prices, workable conditions and the empowerment of farmers in developing countries, so when Fairtrade certified products are sold it makes a real difference for the farmers and workers. The Fairtrade Mark shows that all the ingredients in the product have been manufactured/harvested by organisations that meet internationally agreed Fairtrade standards. As well as providing a fair and stable price for their prices, Fairtrade helps famers, workers and their communities build better roads, have access to health care and send their children to school. Fairtrade produces workable farming places in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana by investing in business and community developments so farmers can improve themselves and their communities’ future. The minimum Fairtrade price is $2,000 per tonne of cocoa, including a $200 premium per tonne to be used for investing in farmers’ business or local community. On top of the Minimum Price and Premium, Fairtrade also provides fundamental training and support for the farmer organisations to help them along the way of becoming successful. Fair trade is a market-based tactic to trade and financial growth which everyone should be donating to, to help provide better futures for farmers and workers in developing countries.

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