![]() Studies of cocoa cultivation in West Africa have provided evidence of planters’ migrating to new forest after exhausting existing forestland, resulting in shifts in production centres within and between countries. The availability of forestland is the decisive factor.Ĭocoa farming once involved the consecutive phases of boom and bust, followed by a shift to a new forest area (production shift), a different product in the same area (diversification) or a different system of cocoa cultivation requiring extra production factors. ![]() These conditions arise from changes in the ratio of labour to land needed to continue cultivating cocoa. This has been the subject of my research. The conditions that created a demand for cheaper sources of labour in the past are still in place today, and nobody understands them better than chocolate multinationals. Properly engaging with this history would help anti-child slavery campaigners understand what exactly they are fighting against. Scholars, journalists and filmmakers addressing the topic of child slavery in West African cocoa farming have thus far failed to engage with the history of cocoa farming and the evolution of the process of cocoa cultivation. The filmmaker, Miki Mistrati, broadcast the documentary on a large screen next to Nestlé’s headquarters in Switzerland, making it difficult for employees to avoid catching glimpses of child slavery in the company’s supply chain. Representatives of the chocolate industry declined both requests for interviews and invitations to watch the film. This sought to provide visual evidence of child slavery in cocoa production in West Africa. An example is the 2010 documentary The Dark Side of Chocolate. Meanwhile, investigative reports and televised documentaries have painted merely a qualitative picture of the phenomenon. Survey and survey-type studies have sought to determine the extent of child slavery (and child labour) in West African cocoa farming, but they have failed to consider its causes.Īn example is a series of field surveys conducted by Tulane University to ascertain the prevalence of the worst forms of child labour in cocoa farming in Ghana and Ivory Coast. The issue of child slavery in cocoa farming in West Africa has been only superficially addressed in the literature. The campaigners were at a clear disadvantage compared with the chocolate makers, not least because they did not fully understand the root causes of child slavery in cocoa farming in West Africa. However, all hope of winning these cases was lost in June 2021, when the US Supreme Court determined that companies such as Nestlé and Cargill could not be sued for child slavery in their supply chains. After 2010, the protocol was basically abandoned.įollowing the missed deadline in 2005, some US campaigners turned to the courts, sponsoring former slaves to sue multinational chocolate companies directly. ![]() However, the deadline was extended to 2008 and then to 2010. The Harkin–Engel Protocol set out six date-specific actions that were supposed to lead to the establishment of an industry-wide standard for product certification on July 1, 2005. They teamed up with various stakeholders to create the Harkin–Engel Protocol, which effectively quelled the 2000–2001 campaign. Subsequently, conceding that child slavery might actually exist in their supply chains, the companies took a different approach. It led a US representative, Elliot Engel, to introduce legislation requiring chocolate firms in the US to label their products “slave free” to prove that no child slaves were involved in their supply chains.Ĭhocolate companies first responded by hiring professional lobbyists to prevent the passage of the “slave free” legislation in the US Senate due to the legal implication of such a label. The campaign was particularly successful in the US due to its unique history of slavery. In response, civil society groups in chocolate-consuming countries launched a campaign calling for the elimination of child slavery in the cocoa industry. Modern Slavery and chocolate manufacturersĪfter the practice was exposed in the 2000 documentary Slavery: A Global Investigation, the chocolate industry initially denied that trafficked children were involved in cocoa farming. Cocoa buyers and chocolate manufacturers still use various strategies to deny, deflect and divert when the issue of child slavery is raised. Modern slavery primarily involves the trafficking of children, who are treated as a “disposable” source of labour. However, the “contracts” produced were meaningless, as the slaves were not permitted to leave the plantations for five years. This allowed both the Portuguese and chocolate producers in Europe to argue that the workers were contracted labourers rather than slaves. ![]() A contract was then drawn out for five years’ labour. If any answer was made, no attention was paid to it.
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