Might be unless you're buying Fair Trade chocolate. Of course, the child slavery chocolate is probably cheaper. Tough choice, huh?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1272522.stmMali's children in chocolate slaveryAt a run-down police station in Sikasso, a small town in Mali, the files on missing children are endless.
The sad truth is that many have been kidnapped and sold into slavery. The going price is about US$30.
The local police chief is in no doubt where the children have gone. "It's definitely slavery over there," he said. "The kids have to work so hard they get sick and some even die."
In all, at least 15,000 children are thought to be over in the neighbouring Ivory Coast, producing cocoa which then goes towards making almost half of the world's chocolate.
Many are imprisoned on farms and beaten if they try to escape. Some are under 11 years old.
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http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/cocoa/573.htmlChild slavery may taint your chocolateStill shopping for Valentine's Day chocolate? There's more to consider than creams or nuts, heart-shaped or bars. People like Paul Tick and school groups across the country are looking at child slavery on cocoa farms in West Africa as they choose their holiday sweets. And shoppers young and old are sending valentines to companies such as M&M/Mars, asking them to "have a heart" and sell "fair trade" chocolate.
"It's important for as many people to know about this as possible," said Paul Tick of Delmar, whose son, Dan, is in the seventh grade. "He's learning about slavery. He popped the question to me: Are there slaves anymore? My first thought was 'no.' "
When Tick read about conditions in Africa, he had to change his answer. Up to 300,000 children between the ages of 9 and 17 may be working in slavery or abusive conditions, according to reports from the U.S. State Department, UNICEF, international labor groups, the BBC and Knight-Ridder.
Valentine's Day is the single biggest day for boxed chocolate sales, as Americans spend $1.1 billion on candy, according to the Chocolate Manufacturers Association and National Confectioners Association, which represent the $13 billion industry. More than 200 religious, labor and human rights groups have urged M&M/Mars to stop buying cocoa from Ivory Coast plantations that abuse children.
Chocolate treats from Godiva to Hershey's contain some Ivory Coast cocoa, experts say.
The way to be certain workers aren't abused is to buy organic or fair trade chocolates, according to Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based international human rights organization. The fair trade program pays farmers enough to meet their basic needs, said Melissa Schweisguth, Global Exchange's fair trade coordinator. "Fair trade is a great way to exercise social responsibility," she said.
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http://www.rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?x=26776Bittersweet chocolate<edit>
“The money we get from selling our cocoa beans...doesn't give us enough to buy materials or a pump for our own water supply,” says Mana Osei Yawu, a village chief in Ghana. “We had no water in the village, we just had dirty water from rivers and streams. People spent a lot of time collecting water and there was always someone who was sick.”
This reality persists in part because of a trade system slanted against the small farmers who grow 80 per cent of the cocoa consumed in North America and Europe. The amount of cash that trickles down to them is set by commodity traders in London and New York. Cocoa prices fluctuate wildly, even as the pricetag on a chocolate bar stays the same. In the past two years the market price for cocoa has seesawed between a 27-year low and a 16-year high.
Low cocoa prices force farmers to cut labour costs — or worse. One ingredient in the commerce of cocoa is a human rights tragedy thought to have been relegated to a harsher past: slavery.
A 2000 U.S. State Department investigation unearthed evidence of slavery and child trafficking in West Africa. A report by the IITA on 1,500 farms in the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon shed more light on this grim picture. It found 284,000 children undertaking hazardous tasks such as using machetes and applying pesticides and insecticides without protective equipment.
About 12,500 children working on large-scale cocoa farms had no relatives in the area, a sign that they had been sold into slavery. Some impoverished parents peddle their children to traffickers, in the desperate hope that a portion of their offspring's earnings will be sent home.
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http://www.stopchildlabor.org/internationalchildlabor/timeline.htmTimeline of Events<edit>
2000
* In February, the State Department’s Human Rights Report concludes that approximately 15,000 children between the ages of nine and 12 have been sold into forced labor on cotton, coffee, and cocoa plantations in northern Ivory Coast in recent years.
* In September, as required under Executive Order No. 13126, the Department of Labor, in consultation with the Departments of State and Treasury, publishes a list of products identified by their country of origin that there is reasonable basis to believe may have been minded, produced, or manufactured by forced or indentured child labor. The preliminary list published in the Federal Register includes only a handful of products from Burma and Pakistan. Cocoa was not on this list. No additional commodities, including cocoa, have been added to the list as of July 31, 2001. This list identifies products prohibited for federal acquisition.
* In September British Television airs a documentary by True Vision that reveals the horrors of slave labor on Ivory Coast cocoa farms.
* In October, President Clinton signs a law that would block U.S. foreign aid, except for humanitarian and trade-related assistance, to countries that do not meet the minimum standards for trying to stop human trafficking. However, the law gives the President broad authority to waive them. Recently, Secretary of State Powell and other top aides to President Bush have expressed caution about economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool, saying the United States often has been too quick to impose them. (The sanctions will not take effect until 2003).
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