child slaves and chocolate in africa

One hundred years from now people will look back with horror at the economics and business practices of our era. Just as we look with shock at the African Slave Trade of the 16-19th Centuries, so they will look at us with bewilderment that we could have used children as slaves and that we could build a global economy upon the slave labour of children worldwide. They will be amazed that we could ignore this horror.

The Ivory Coast in northwest Africa supplies 50% of the world's cocoa for the manufacture of chocolate. Child slaves harvest and process most of this cocoa. Children are also captured in South America and sold as slaves in Europe and elsewhere. In Asia there is widespread child sexual slavery. There is also child slavery in North America and Europe of many kinds.

In North America and Europe we have seen the emergence of a huge chocolate industry with companies like Hershey and Nestle. There is plenty of information about this child slave industry on the Internet. Check this link for lots of info.

“The $13 billion dollar chocolate industry is dominated by two firms: Hershey's and M&M's/Mars. Both of these companies use mostly Ivory Coast cocoa; their products are almost certainly produced partly by slaves.” Many of our schools use these chocolate products to raise money to help children. That's ironic in a heart wrenching way.

The most troubling aspect of this worldwide slave industry is the role we and our children play in Canada, the USA, Europe and elsewhere. Our children are used by this 'industry' to keep those child slaves in their place - in chains and cells and fields of blood and suffering where they labour under horrific conditions and die lonely and painful deaths.

Every time we buy and eat chocolate and coffee and other products of this slave trade, we are supporting those who enslave and exploit children for gain . Our children are slave consumers of these products. They are enticed by intense and effective advertising campaigns by companies who support children's television programming. In this way they are used to maintain the enslavement of children elsewhere. This is sadly ironic!

What have we in the “free" world done to help? We have increased our chocolate consumption and we have supported this 21st Century Children's Slave Trade. We have ignored the global system of slavery that causes this injustice and enables its continued profitability. Shame on us!

Bill S-209 [Protection of Children] is in Second Reading in the Canadian Parliament. It is a first step towards combating this ugly injustice on our soil and then helping those nameless little souls who labour for our pleasure.

Please help to end child slavery in our time! Our legislators will be condemned and castigated for their inaction and we will be branded as criminals for what we do without thinking every day – eating chocolate that destroys our health and enslaves children.

Stand With Us Against Child Slavery - The Moral and Economics Crisis of our Age

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