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What is the Real Cost of Chocolate?
What is the Real Cost of Chocolate?Your favourite chocolate bar might not taste so sweet when you consider that with each bite you are supporting an industry where children may be forced to work long hours in dangerous conditions instead of going to school.
Spotlight on West Africa Spotlight on West Africa
About 70% of the cocoa beans used to make chocolate around the world come from West Africa, 
Harvesting cocoa is intensive, back-breaking work and cocoa prices have been declining in recent years. To keep costs down, farmers traditionally use their children and other family members to help. Criminal networks have been caught moving children across regions and international borders to work on cocoa farms. World Vision even learned of one trafficker who smuggled children into the Ivory Coast by faking a convoy of ambulances containing healthy children who were bandaged to fool authorities. Today there are hundreds of thousands of children working on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast and Ghana. Some of these cocoa children routinely carry heavy loads, and work with fire, chemicals and knives, with little or no protection. Many of them have no chance of going to school.
Exposing the truthOver the last 10 years, the international media has begun to expose the use of child labour in the cocoa industry. Some media reports have claimed that in the worst cases children as young as six are being forced to work 80-100 hours a week, enduring beatings and malnutrition.  The Ivorian government has blamed the international cocoa industry for keeping prices too low to provide decent livelihoods for farmers. The global price, determined by cocoa exchanges in London and New York, has plummeted in recent years, putting intense pressure on farmers to increase their yields. Meanwhile chocolate manufacturers and exporters have continued to make massive profits.
What's the chocolate industry doing about it?In September 2001, members of the chocolate industry signed a voluntary protocol known as the "Harkin-Engle Protocol" after the two U.S. Congressmen that initiated the industry reform. The protocol aimed to establish credible standards of public certification that ensured cocoa production was free of forced labour and the worst forms of child labour in the Ivory Coast and Ghana. The first steps was to survey farms representing half of the cocoa production in Ghana and the Ivory Coast and certify they were free of the worst forms of child labour. These survey results were then to be independently verified. This process was to be completed by July 2005. The industry failed to meet that deadline. Another failed deadlineIndustry was given an extension until July 2008. But now, three years later, they have missed their second deadline, failing to have the survey results independently verified by 1 July 2008. World Vision calls on the chocolate industry to say 'yes' to a detailed, fully funded plan of action for tackling labour exploitation by 1 December 2008 - read more
What are the solutions?Ending child exploitation and trafficking in cocoa farms is not simple and it will take time. Boycotting our favourite chocolates is not the answer, as it only hurts poor farming families more. Instead, solutions will be found by working at many levels:
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