Churches Join Stop The Traffik Coalition in Chocolate Labour Concerns

Many churches and faith groups are leading the way in bringing justice for children who labour in cocoa farms in Cote D'Ivoire, as part of the Stop The Traffik coalition.

|PIC1|Stop The Traffik, a global coalition of organisations working together to fight against people trafficking, recently revealed that the chocolate industry in Britain is failing to properly address unethical practices in cocoa farms.

"Chocolate manufacturers promised to end the use of trafficked children in harvesting the cocoa beans that make our chocolate by 2005," explained a spokesperson from Stop The Traffik, "but this has not been done. They have started several worthy initiatives but are not addressing the central issue of trafficked labour.

"Stop The Traffik is calling for the whole industry to declare which farms they buy cocoa beans from, and to guarantee that no trafficked labour is used. Nothing less will do."

One testimony is from a young boy called Victor who was trafficked from Mali and forced to work on a cocoa farm on the Cote D'Ivoire for three years, suffering harsh treatment and beatings before he managed to escape. He said: "Tell your children that they have bought something that I suffered to make. When they are eating chocolate they are eating my flesh."

Boys as young as 12 and perhaps even younger are taken from homes in Mali by deception or force by people traffickers and then sold to Cote D'Ivoire plantations where they are made to work 12 hours a day and seven days a week, in appalling conditions.

Nearly half the world's cocoa is harvested in the Cote D'Ivoire. As it is a hidden trade, exact figures are hard to come by. In 2000 the US State Department Human Rights report found that more than 15,000 Malian children were trafficked into this area to work as slaves both on coffee and cocoa plantations, the majority being cocoa.

Stop The Traffik chairman, the Rev Steve Chalke said: "Inevitably the strict enforcement of the 'Traffik Free Guarantee' will eat into chocolate manufacturers' profits, but last year Nestle profits rose by 14 per cent to £3.78 billion, so we think that they can afford to put their house in order."