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Cacao and Child Slavery

chocolate_boy_slavery
As the demand for chocolate has exploded in Western society, the price for cacao beans has plummeted in Western Africa where 70 percent of the world’s cocoa is harvested.

To keep their prices competitive, cocoa farmers use children that they do not pay and only feed sparingly. These children are uneducated and often kidnapped or sold to the farmers by relatives who have no idea they are condemning the child to harsh and often brutal conditions. Most children are between the ages of 12 years old and 16 years old, but some are as young as 7 years old when they start. They rarely have access to clean water or sanitary bathrooms; the vast majority of cacao harvesters have never tasted chocolate.

Aly Diabate, a former cacao slave, recalls that he worked from sunrise to sunset without rest. “It took two people to put the bag [of cacao beans] on my head. And when you didn’t hurry, you were beaten.” Drissa, another former cacao slave was asked what he would tell the people who eat chocolate made from the cacao he’s harvested, and he replied, “When people eat chocolate they are eating my flesh.”

The process of harvesting cacao beans is a perilous one; since it is grown in regions with high insect populations, the cacao pods are sprayed with chemicals that can be harmful to their handlers. The process of clearing for planting and the opening of the cacao pods are both accomplished with machetes, so deep cuts are an expected work hazard.

 

Facts on Modern Slavery

 

There are 600,000 cacao farms in the Ivory Coast alone; the business accounts for a third of the nation’s entire economy. To keep costs low, farm owners feed their workers the cheapest foods available, often a corn paste and bananas. UNICEF estimates that half a million children work on the cacao farms of the Ivory Coast.

The chocolate industry is worth an estimated $110 billion per year, $13 billion of which is within the United States. The farms of West Africa supply cocoa to international giants such as Hershey’s, M&M Mars and Nestlé, linking them irrefutably to child slavery and human trafficking.

According to spokeswoman for the Chocolate Manufacturer’s Association, Susan Smith, “A ‘slave free’ label would hurt the people it was intended to help” by prompting a boycott of all chocolate farmed in the Ivory Coast. Since cacao beans farmed by free workers are mixed with those farmed by slaves, it is impossible for even Fair Trade Certified brands to guarantee that their product can’t be traced back to child slavery.

– Lydia Caswell

Sources: CNN, Food Empowerment Project, John Robbins, The Huffington Post
Photo: Nickelodeon

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Profiles of Child Labor: Clarisse Kambire, 13

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Look past the tag on your cute cotton underwear – it says a lot more than, “Made with 20 percent organic fibers from Burkina Faso.”

Look closer and you will see a young girl drenched in sweat, picking cotton for hours on end, often while being whipped in sweltering heat that often breaks 100 degrees Fahrenheit. She has been beaten, malnourished, barred from education and abused on a daily basis. She is never paid for her back-breaking effort and sleeps on the floor of a tiny hut. This scenario is more than a nightmare.

It has a name: child labor – and it is a dark reality for 13-year-old foster child Clarisse Kambire.

The organic and fair-trade cotton program she works for is located in Burkina Faso, one of the poorest areas in West Africa. The poverty-stricken country relies on cotton as its chief export and, consequently, ropes many others like Kambire into child labor every day.

Subsistence farmers involved in the program say that they are unable to grow “ethically sourced” cotton without forcing children into their fields. The conditions in the fields, however, obviously do not support this claim. Workers as young as five years old are abused physically, mentally and emotionally. They are also never paid.

Though the circumstance may seem to be a foreign issue, that is not the case; Kambire’s cotton can be found quite close to home. In fact, you may be wearing it yourself. The fibers from the cotton program are ultimately used to make underwear for the popular American retailer known as Victoria’s Secret. After a revealing interview, the company’s ethical standards began to be regarded with much public suspicion.

Her parents separated when she was four years old. After that, the girl was tossed between relatives on her father’s side. An aunt then took Kambire to the village of Benvar in Burkina Faso and left her in the home of 30-year-old Victorien Kamboule, the man for whom she now works in the cotton fields. Though the two are cousins, Kambire is also considered to be Kamboule’s enfant confie, a French term meaning, “a child who can be vulnerable to exploitation.”

After being dumped at Kamboule’s house and forced into hard labor at the age of nine, Kambire’s only comfort was her makeshift mattress: a thin, faded plastic mat in a tiny mud hut.

Her bedroom doesn’t boast much–a slender wooden bench, a few hand-washed clothes drying on a line and nothing else. No toys, no photos, not even a toothbrush.

“Nothing,” she says.

At the same time Kambire is drowning in sweat and potentially deadly mosquito bites, Kamboule, his wife and their two children–a three-year-old girl and a one-year-old boy–sleep soundly underneath the safety of a mosquito net on a bed in an adjoining room.

Waking up is not much better; Kamboule only screams at her to get out into the field. Kamboule’s cruelty extends to every area of the field, not just sleeping arrangements for the workers. Sluggishness due to exhaustion is an error punished by severe whipping with a tree branch.

The fear of this punishment leaves the girl with a daily sense of dread. Every morning frightens her more.

“I’m starting to think about how he will shout at me and beat me again,” she says. “At night, I dream and wonder what can happen to me in the cotton field. I feel that something bad could happen to me.”

Cotton picking is not her only task. The 13-year-old girl also prepares the field by helping to dig over 500 rows with only a hoe–something that could be done easily with an ox and plow. Unfortunately, that is just the thing that Kamboule is unable to afford, and so he makes up for his lack of monetary funds with Kambire’s tears and sweat.

“I dream that a day will come when I shall no longer be working on the farm, but rather be in a kind of work which would be more interesting for me,” Kambire says. “Any other work would make me feel better, except for the farm work. I want to take care of my own needs.”

– Samantha Davis

Sources: Child Labor Public Education Project, New York Daily News, Bloomberg
Photo: Bloomberg

 

10 Facts about Child Labor