Warning on chocolate 'child slaves'

[PrincessB]

 
Thousands of children are being forced to work as slave labour on cocoa farms in West Africa to help produce the chocolate British youngsters will be enjoying this Easter, campaigners warned.

Stop the Traffick, an anti-slavery coalition which is backed by Amnesty International, World Vision and Tearfund, is demanding the major chocolate manufacturers certify chocolate with a "traffick-free" guarantee so consumers can eat chocolate without unwittingly supporting child slave labour.

Stop the Traffick believes the root of the problem is the abject poverty of the farmers - which drives them to seek cheap or free labour - and is demanding more money from the multi-billion pound industry to protect children.

But British chocolate manufacturers said they believed trafficking was "unacceptable" and the industry was investing in a region-wide certification scheme to tackle the issue.

Stop the Traffick chairman Steve Chalke: "These youngsters come from a background of poverty, and are even knowingly sold by their parents sometimes.

"Often what will happen is the parents are starving, they're poor, they have nothing and somebody comes along and says 'I'll take your son, he'll work on my farm and I'll give you some money.

"They think 'we'll get money so we can eat and our son gets a job'. They don't know what he's going to is a living hell.

"They are being hit, they have been taken from their mothers, they effectively have no freedom, no escape, there's no pay, little food, no education - and we sit here munching through our chocolate bars."

The call for a "traffick free guarantee" and for implementing a monitoring scheme for farms has been backed by MP Mike Hancock, who tabled an Early Day Motion before the Commons which has been signed by more than 50 MPs in the UK .

Mr Hancock said: "We all love chocolate, but when we're eating it, we should bear in mind that on farms around the world, to produce the chocolate we all love so much, young children are being badly exploited."

The Lib Dem MP for Portsmouth South said he was determined to highlight the issue and get all sides to put pressure on West African governments to implement laws which would protect children.

According to Save the Children, many youngsters in the region are also used to help out on family farms in hazardous conditions, and the aid agency is campaigning to eradicate the worst forms of child labour.

Anita Sheth, senior analyst with Save the Children Canada, said: "Children work long hours in the sun, unprotected, they carry heavy loads on their backs, they are on farms weeding the cocoa areas, spraying pesticides unprotected and during harvesting they are climbing trees with big machetes trying to cut the cocoa pods down."

Leading manufacturers including Cadbury, Kraft, Masterfoods and Nestle, who work through the Biscuit Cake Chocolate and Confectionery Association (BCCCA) on the issue, said human trafficking was unacceptable.

"We all want to ensure that the cocoa we buy is grown using internationally approved labour standards - notably without the worst forms of child or forced labour," the association said.

Alison Ward, of the BCCCA, said manufacturers in Britain were contributing around 8 million a year to developing certification and monitoring schemes which should cover around 50% of cocoa growing areas in Ivory Coast and Ghana by July 2008.

The BCCCA is also supporting "farmer field schools" which aim to educate producers on boosting their yield, labour practices and social concerns such as HIV/Aids and community action plans to raise living standards.

Ms Ward added: "We really believe it is not about putting a label on some chocolate, it's about driving change across the region."

But campaigners are concerned the changes are not happening quickly enough to help children exploited by cocoa growing.

Benedetta Lacey, business and human rights manager at Amnesty UK said: "British consumer confidence in chocolate will be tarnished if the industry does not get serious about eradicating the exploitation of children from its supply chain."

Amnesty is concerned the current initiative is voluntary and is calling for global enforceable standards which will ensure children are not the victims of exploitation or trafficking.