Drive to check child labour in chocolate production in West Africa

When biting into that delicious bar of chocolate, have you ever considered the possibility that child labour might have been involved in collecting the cocoa to make it?

Although this might seem farfetched, it is most probably the case, especially in Africa. Children work 18-hour days, seven days a week earning a monthly salary of about Lm7.

Very often the salary is claimed instead by the trafficker who brought them to the Ivory Coast from Mali, Burkina Faso and other countries in Africa. The children lack adequate housing, medical care, food and schooling.

Last year Malta imported more than seven million kilogrammes of chocolate or chocolate products from European countries as well as from Australia, Mexico, Korea, the US, Argentina, South Africa and Malaysia. This works out to around 18 kilos of chocolate per person.

Most of the imported products originate from cocoa beans produced in Africa.

A Canadian who was educated in Malta, Anita Sheth, works with these children. She is responsible for advocacy at Save the Children Canada.

Based in Toronto, the organisation has offices which run child rights programmes in 10 countries and has been working in West Africa for the past 21 years.

Their goal for the current year is to eliminate child labour in the production of chocolate in west Africa and in the sex trade in Canada.

While the price of a chocolate bar in Europe and North America has been stable, the price given to farmers for cocoa beans has fallen as much as 30 per cent in the last four years.

Cheap prices paid to farmers caused them to seek the cheapest form of labour - children, Ms Sheth said.

Save the Children Canada advocacy work entails getting chocolate manufacturers to pay more for the cocoa beans and build schools, enabling children to work flexible hours, so that they could find alternative forms of income without being exploited.

An estimated 250 million children aged between five and 15 are employed worldwide, mostly in developing countries. About one third of these working children are in Africa. In South East Asia, 10 million children are employed. In Africa, one in three children has a job.

Ms Sheth has played a key role in organising advocacy strategies with different countries and lobbying governments, chocolate manufactures, Customs agents, labour boards and immigration officials, among others.

A UN report indicates that 15,000 children between nine and 12 have been sold into forced labour on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast in the last few years.

This region of Africa accounted for 43 per cent of the world's three billion kilogram annual cocoa crop and contributed significantly to the multi-billion dollar global cocoa industry.

The main causes of child labour in the Ivory Coast are high levels of poverty, low prices paid to farmers, the strength of the informal economy and the absence of national legislation.

Working children in West Africa fall into two groups - those trafficked between national borders for a price and moved into the highly unmonitored, informal and rural sectors; and those originating within a country and seeking work both in the formal and non-formal sectors.

Ms Sheth said that most reports on child labour practices on cocoa farms in West Africa indicate that children were often trafficked from Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo and Benin, brought into the Ivory Coast and other countries in West Africa and put to work in the agricultural sector. Most of them found work on cocoa farms where the need for cheap child labour was in high demand.

"We have never tasted chocolate. We work hard to pick the (cocoa) beans in the hot sun for 12 hours, with no breaks. If we sit we are dead. We carry 40kg bags on our shoulders. If we run away, they always catch us, they cut our feet with razors. When people eat chocolate they are eating my flesh," Drissa, a 14-year-old boy, had told her.

Thirteen-year-old Traore said: "One day I was really sick. I could not stand up and I could not open my eyes. The boss came in and I told him that I am sick, he shouted at me, took a stick and cracked it behind my leg and said do you feel better now? All day he kept his eyes on me to see if I will sit down... They give us one meal a day, sometimes two, small portions."

There are between 600,000 and one million small cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast, virtually all of them family-run enterprises.

Ms Sheth said there was a growing call for action by Anti-Slavery International, Save the Children, Unicef and other non-governmental organisations apart from media attention given to West African children being trafficked and forced to work in hazardous conditions.

As a result, western governments began to get involved in the violation of children's rights on cocoa farms and proclaimed that perpetrator countries and chocolate manufacturers would be severally penalised if found to trade in cocoa produced by child slaves.

A protocol was drawn up in October 2001 calling for a voluntary public certification of cocoa by July 2005 to assure consumers that the chocolate they bought was not produced by exploitative forms of child labour.

With funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Save the Children Canada created Horon So, a recovery house for trafficked children in Sikasso, Mali.

Horon So also provides children the opportunity to receive professional counselling and space to share their experiences with other children from similar circumstances.

It houses children for five to seven days before they are accompanied either back to their family or for skills training of their choice in their community.

Since its formation in October 2000, Horon So has helped 54 trafficked children and 115 intercepted children.

As part of its ongoing efforts to eliminate child trafficking in West Africa, Horon So gathers information on children that pass through the centre. This information is shared with the Mali government and local media, as well as other international organisations committed to protecting children from trafficking.

Through the centre, Save the Children Canada provided victims of child trafficking with counselling, basic health care, and shelter before reuniting them with their families or placing them in alternative care.

Save the Children Canada kept track of all children. All received training to become youth advocates against trafficking of children for forced labour purposes.

In Mali, Save the Children also worked with street children to provide them with training, vocational skills and an education to secure opportunities for them within their communities in order to prevent them from falling prey to traffickers, or from being lured into exploitative labour in the region.

In collaboration with the government of Mali and the local authorities, Save the Children educates border guards/police on the issue of child trafficking so that they are on the lookout for children travelling with strangers or by themselves.

Save the Children worked directly with the governments of Mali and Ivory Coast to bring an end to the problem; both governments signed a bilateral agreement on September 1, 2000 to end child trafficking.