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Child Labor on Cocoa Farms
A child labor is defined as an individual under 18 years old who cannot attend schooling and has the responsibility to earn for the family. Children are known to be more vulnerable as they can be beaten, punished and malnourished in their workplace, therefore they are considered as easy to manage. Child labor is generally a hidden issue as they are not always registered. Many children are picked up from the streets, they do not have a birth certificate and many may not know when they were born. Their tractability is also difficult because many of these farms are in remote places.

The cocoa farms in West Africa are known to practice child labor as a form of getting inexpensive labor. The estimates around 2012 show that there are over 100,000 children still work in cocoa farms.

Cocoa Production and Consumption
Theobroma cacao is the tree found to be grown around the equator. Their pods contain about 6-8 seeds that are commonly used in chocolate products, cocoa butter or sometimes skin-care products, however chocolate remains the primary product. The cocoa pods do not ripe simultaneously, and therefore it must be harvested several times. During the primary harvesting season, workers have to spend 10-12 hours a day collecting these pods. Once they are collected, workers cut open pods to extract the seeds inside using a machete. Later, the seeds are dried and fermented till it can be exported or sold to other agencies. The beans are then made into cocoa liquor, and compressed to make cocoa butter, powder, or used in production of chocolate. .

Cocoa is mainly a cash crop or commodity and as a commodity crop, its prices are determined from the stock market. The prices of 1 metric ton of cocoa range from (U.S) $2000-3000. Since farmers are not directly involved in selling cocoa beans to the large companies, they do not get the full revenue from the sale. Due to low increasingly low prices of chocolate, the farmers are unable to sustain or develop with the profit they produce.

Consumption of Chocolate
Majority of the consumption of chocolate is from European countries, with about 24 kilograms eaten averagely by each individual in a year. Altogether, Europe imports over 50% of the cocoa for production of chocolate. North America imports about 20% of the cocoa for production of chocolate, mainly United States. Asian countries do not import chocolate as heavily as it is generally not an ingredient in the traditional sweets, thus the total for Oceania and Asia totals to 12%. Lastly, Africa only uses 1% of the cocoa in the production of chocolate.

Ivory Coast and Ghana
The Ivory Coast (also known as Côte d'Ivoire) produces 40% of cocoa used in chocolate. Large companies such as Nestle, Hershey and Mars are the primary consumers of cocoa from those farms. The other major contributor to world’s cocoa is Ghana, which produces about 20-30% of cocoa. The beans are sold to similar multinational corporations as in Ivory Coast.

Approximately 90% of The Ivory Coast and Ghana grows and produces cocoa, accounting up to 2 million small farms owned by families. Over 16 million people in those two countries depend on the production of cocoa for income. These farmers make approximately $30-100 annually from large manufacturers. However they produce as high as 3.3 million tons of cocoa

Both these countries have a different system of exporting their beans. Majority of Ghana has developed a system that incorporates a cooperative agency which buys the beans from several farmers. Later it sells to different companies. Ivory Coast on the other hand has a “fragmented system”, where farmers could sell their products to a small agency, which could then sell it to another workplace.

Practices of Slavery
The slavery occurs in the form of either debt bondage, or being lured in to earn money for their families or sometimes abducted by traffickers. Debt bondage, in terms of child slavery, is when a family member “sells” their children for the amount of debt they owe to the farmers in the form of providing labor. Thus the children working are not given a wage for the entire period of their labor. Debt bondage is considered to be the worst form of slavery however, it is the least known. Often times, the work provided by these children are worth more than the initial amount borrowed, however due to desperation and poverty, it is the only option available.

In other cases, families may voluntarily send their children to work in the farms as it seems to be the only career they can pursue. The common belief is that because education is usually unaffordable for the families, the only “knowledge” they could possibly gain is through working in the farm. It is considered to be “learning the tricks of the trade” and hopefully provide for their family.

In some cases, the children may be abducted by human traffickers off the streets and forced to work on the farms. In all of these cases, the children could be as young as 10 years old and have to work in dangerous conditions on the farm. Most of them have to work with large machetes and often get cuts over their body. They generally are not permitted to leave the farm or return to their families, and almost never paid for their labor. Often the children may be subjected to harsh punishments or violent threats during their work. Therefore, by definition those are considered as enslavement as the farmer has absolute control over children working in harsh conditions without pay.

Harkin-Engle Protocol
Lobbyists from United States protested to have a legislation made to enforce companies with labeling all chocolate and candy products in 2001. This would require all companies to directly state if the chocolate had been produced by child labors or slaves. After much protest from companies, the U.S representatives negotiated a protocol (referred to as Harkin-Engle Protocol or The Cocoa Protocol) with all major companies as well as the NGO “Free the Slaves” and the Government of Ivory Coast.

The document stated, “OBJECTIVE – Cocoa beans and their derivative products should be grown and processed in a manner that complies with International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 182 Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor”. The chocolate companies were required by this protocol to present a clear, and transparent supply chain as well as fund to invest in children's education.

Initially, the deadline was set for July 2005, however due to unforeseeable events such as aftermath of civil war in Ivory Coast, the deadline was pushed to 2008, and then later pushed to 2010. Over the decade, millions of dollars have been reported to fund towards eradicating child labor and slavery but it still has not been close to a sufficient amount. Generally, there is a consensus that Harkin-Engle Protocol did not have a substantial effect on eradicating child labor as it still continues today.

Fair Trade
Fair trade is a process of giving the main producer of the product a fair price for each bag of cocoa beans. In this process, the intermediaries are often paid less, or not required directly by the corporations. Fair trade also means that the farmers are paid a consistent pricing through the period of trade. Some organizations, such as “Fairtrade”, offer labeling products considered to be fairly traded and also audit the supply chain. These organizations generally have a list of supplement requirements from the company such as standard investment per family. This process has known to bring positive results in the area. However, the government and authorities still remain weak. Large multinational corporations however find it a daunting task and sometimes impossible to trace the specific sources given their large list of suppliers.