Child slavery and chocolate: All too easy to find
In Child Slaves, CNN David McKenzie travels into canada goose outlet reviews the heart of the Ivory Coast to investigate children working in the cocoa fields. (More information and air times on CNN International.)
Daloa, Ivory canada goose outlet online uk Coast (CNN) Chocolate’s billion dollar industry starts with workers like Abdul. He squats with a gang of a dozen harvesters on an Ivory Coast canada goose outlet toronto factory farm.
Abdul holds the yellow cocoa pod lengthwise and gives it two quick cracks, snapping it open to reveal milky white cocoa beans. He dumps the beans on a growing pile.
Abdul is 10 years old, a three year veteran of the job.
He has never tasted chocolate.
During the course of an investigation for CNN’s Freedom Project initiative an investigation that went deep into the cocoa canada goose outlet canada fields of Ivory Coast a team of CNN journalists found that canada goose outlet nyc child labor, trafficking and slavery are rife in an industry that produces some of the world’s best known brands.
It was not supposed canada goose to be this way.
After a series of news reports surfaced in 2001 about gross violations in the cocoa industry, lawmakers in the United States put immense pressure on the industry to change.
“We felt canada goose outlet store uk like the public ought canada goose coats on sale to know about it, and we ought to take some action to try to stop it,” said Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who, together with Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, spearheaded the response. “How many people https://www.nationaalzweminstituuteindhoven.nl in canada goose outlet parka America know that all this chocolate they are eating candies and all of those wonderful chocolates is being cheap canada goose uk produced by terrible child labor?”
More about the Harkin Engel Protocol
But after intense canada goose black friday sale lobbying by the cocoa industry, lawmakers weren’t able to canada goose outlet black friday push through a law. What they got was Canada Goose Jackets a voluntary protocol, signed by the heads of the chocolate industry, to stop the worst forms of child labor “as a matter of urgency.” One of the key goals was to certify the cocoa trade as child labor free.
“It was meant to achieve the end of child slave labor in cocoa fields,” Engel said.
UNICEF estimates that nearly a half million children work on farms across Ivory Coast, which produces nearly 40% of the world’s supply of cocoa. The agency canada goose uk shop says hundreds of thousands of children, many of them trafficked across borders, are engaged in the worst forms of child labor.
A recent study by Tulane University says the industry’s efforts to stop child labor are “uneven” and “incomplete” and that 97% of Ivory Coast’s farmers had not been reached. But the industry’s main representative in the country disagrees with the assessment.
“I think the situation has Canada Goose Parka improved exponentially,” said Rabola Kagohi, country director for the International Cocoa Initiative, the chocolate industry’s answer to fighting child labor and trafficking. “Today, the message is physically getting through.”
Kagohi works out of a basement office with one other permanent employee.
“There are some results,” he said. “I wish that you had spoken to some planters.”
None of the farmers CNN spoke to in the heart of the cocoa production region said they had ever been reached by the International Cocoa Initiative, the government or chocolate companies about child trafficking.
Children such as Abdul don’t know anything about protocols or certification. All they know is work.
When Abdul’s mother died, a stranger brought him across the border to the farm. Abdul says all he’s given is a little food, the torn clothes on his back, and an occasional tip from the cheap canada goose farmer. Abdul is a modern child slave.
And he is not the only canada goose outlet youngster working in his group.
Yacou insisted he is 16, but his face looks far Canada Goose online younger.
“My mother brought me from Burkina Faso when my canada goose uk black friday father died,” he said.
Scars crisscross Yacou’s legs from a goose outlet canada machete. He can’t clear grass in the cocoa fields without cutting himself. During harvest season, he works day after day hacking the cocoa pods.
The emotional scars run much deeper.
“I wish I could go to school. I want to read and write,” he said. But Yacou hasn’t spent a single day in school, canada goose outlet uk sale and he has no idea how to leave the farm.
“It makes me angry,” Engel said. As far as he’s concerned, the chocolate companies haven done enough.