Mitra Ebadolahi Ebadolahi is a
fourth-year international development studies and history student
who encourages comments and criticism at mightymousemitra@yahoo.com.
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Ahh, Valentine’s Day. A day to celebrate love and
couplehood with flowers, jewelry and, above all, child
slavery.
Today, people everywhere will be eating brightly wrapped pieces
of chocolate, most of which was made with cocoa beans from Ivory
Coast in West Africa. Few people realize that some of this cocoa
was produced by child slave labor.
Ivory Coast farmers supply 43 percent of the world’s
cocoa, more than any other single producer. Cocoa is harvested on
600,000 small farms throughout the country and accounts for nearly
half of the nation’s entire economy. West African cocoa beans
are purchased and processed by chocolate manufacturers around the
world.
Recently, MIT graduate student Steven Millman discovered that
many of the most popular companies use cocoa likely tainted by
child slave labor. Here in the United States, all-American
favorites like Ben and Jerry’s, Hershey’s, Mars
Confectionery, –maker of M&M’s and Snickers”“
Nestle and Kraft all use cocoa from Ivory Coast. Other suspected
companies include See’s Candies, Godiva Chocolates and
Ghirardelli.
The truth is that the Emancipation Proclamation did not end
slavery ““ it continues to be a global problem. Since the late
1970s, multinational chocolate manufacturers have pushed more
developing nations to adopt cocoa production in order to increase
the worldwide supply.
 Illustration by JARRETT QUON/Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Overproduction has forced cocoa prices to tumble from a high of
$4.89 per pound in 1977 to today’s price of just 51 cents per
pound. Declining prices have placed incredible pressure on cocoa
farmers to take desperate measures, including using child slave
labor, to cut operating costs and save their farms.
In West Africa, impoverished families from countries such as
Mali and Togo are forced to send their children away in search of
work and income. Many of these children are smuggled into Ivory
Coast by traffickers, who trick the youngsters into believing they
will be paid for their labor.
Child slaves in Ivory Coast are usually between nine and 16
years old, although sometimes they are even younger. They are
illiterate, hungry and desperate for money. Too young to understand
why or how they have become slaves, these children rarely receive
any reimbursement for their backbreaking labor. Some are even
underfed and severely beaten by their “owners.”
The Chocolate Manufacturers Association, the American chocolate
industry’s trade group, initially argued giant U.S.
corporations could not possibly inspect all of their production
sites to ensure slave-free manufactured chocolate. But the industry
quickly changed its tune after Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and Sen.
Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, proposed a system of mandatory chocolate and
cocoa labeling to draw consumer attention to slave-manufactured
products.
Last summer, after hiring Bob Dole to lobby against the labeling
law on their behalf, the CMA grudgingly accepted a four-year plan
to eliminate child slave labor from Ivory Coast cocoa farms.
This past October, the Harkin-Engel Protocol established an
independent monitoring system for the farms and voluntary
industry-wide standards for anti-slavery labeling on American
chocolate and cocoa products.
The Protocol, however, is too little, too late.
The agreement does not ask the American chocolate industry to
adopt Fair Trade standards, which would boost cocoa prices
worldwide and enable farmers to subsist on cocoa farming without
using slave labor.
Additionally, the protocol is strictly voluntary, which means
multi-national chocolate manufacturers can continue to neglect
their responsibility as corporate citizens and avoid any sanctions
for using cocoa produced by slave labor.
Since this cocoa is cheaper to yield and to buy, profit-seeking
corporations will naturally continue to purchase it unless they are
compelled to act otherwise.
Furthermore, many of the agreement’s measures are
redundant, since existing United States laws already prohibit the
use of slave-tainted products or imports of slave-produced primary
materials. If the U.S. Customs Service was more competent and less
corporate-friendly, American chocolate corporations would be unable
to purchase slave cocoa from West Africa or any other region of the
world.
Internationally, agreements like the United Nations Convention
on Children’s Rights also prohibit child slavery, yet this
toothless accord has not stopped any of its signatories, including
the United States, from adopting more proactive measures to protect
the lives of destitute child slaves.
Americans spend $16 billion on 3.3 billion pounds of chocolate
every year. We have a responsibility to demand slave-free
chocolate. How can we enjoy a candy bar or chocolate ice cream cone
when we know children have been abused and enslaved to produce
it?
By boycotting slave manufactured cocoa products in favor of fair
trade, slave-free chocolate, we will send a powerful message to
chocolate manufacturers: Our sweet teeth are also concerned with
social justice.