So these children are driven to work due to poverty right? So isn’t the answer to try to address that rather than to say “stop using cocoa harvested by child labor?” Like I’m totally pro-non-child-labor-cocoa, but wouldn’t the kids just get other jobs then?
their parents also work harvesting cocoa. The reason they are poor despite being working a lot is that they are not paid enough for their work… by Mars (or Nestle, Mondelez, etc)
That is why I’m buying chocolate made in Africa, rather than chocolate made from beans from Africa. That way the value is generated there and not here.
It’s not about child abuse, it’s about not making enough money so they need their children to help out. If they get a fair salary, they don’t need to exploit their kids for labor.
Yes, and this is a vestige of the destabilization of African nations by white colonial powers to have and sell enslaved people. What boggles my mind is that paying a living wage to workers would increase the price of Mars chocolate slightly if at all (corporate profits could eat the difference) but the people with the power to make those decisions are like “nope! We could get even more profits by paying less for raw materials!” so they seek and/or create even more disenfranchised workers. Doesn’t get more disenfranchised than a 5 year old that has to go to work to help the family make ends meet, but I’m sure the corporate overlords are cooking something up as we speak.
John Oliver did a great show on chocolate around Halloween time. It showed just how much child labor goes into producing chocolate for the world, when almost no one really spends any time thinking about where it comes from.
The CNN clip in that video, is even better: the reporter gives the guys a bar of chocolate, and they go all “ohh, it tastes so great!”. Then he asks them if they’ll give any to the children, to which the guy answer “they can have the wrappers”… at which point the reporter produces out a second bar saying “don’t worry, give them this”… still, I don’t recall the kids getting any.
I enjoyed the part with the other journalist where he was on the phone with someone who hung up when the reporter pointed out that kids could stop working if their parents made more money. Insane that he was defending that practice.
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