BITTER Chocolate Stories ENG - Joana Choumali & Marijn Heemskerk

Why This Book?

We associate chocolate with celebration, with pleasure, with comfort, with – well, insert any positive word here. But do we ever associate it with the children who literally make this luxury product possible?

More than 2 million child labourers work on cocoa plantations in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, and tens of thousands of children are victims of trafficking and forced labour in cocoa production.

Who are these children and why do they work on cocoa plantations?

Fifteen of them, who were victim of these practices, tell their story in this book: Bassirou, Valerie, Augustin, Sarata, Mohamed, Cedric, Ghislain, Issaka, Bèbè, Kassoum, Laeticia, Alexis, Cathérine, Josias and Edyon.

These are the children who work 12 hours a day, six days a week clearing the undergrowth around the cocoa trees and harvesting the pods; the children who spray pesticides without protective clothing; the children who carry heavy baskets on their heads, risking neck and spine injuries; the children who are as young as six when they start work.

The children, in short, who ensure that we, the consumers thousands of kilometres away, can eat the chocolate we love so much.

Why do these children do such dangerous work, and how can we stop it? To answer these questions, we spoke to the children themselves and to the people around them, because child labour and child slavery do not exist in a vacuum: they are a consequence of numerous factors, including poverty, culture, traditional migration flows and low levels of education.

We take you to the cocoa plantations and tell the stories of the children, their parents, the cocoa farmers and the people who are trying to put an end to child labour.

This is not the first time that this problem has been in the spotlight.

NGOs and the media have been reporting on child labour in cocoa production for years. In 2001, the chocolate industry even signed an agreement pledging to eliminate the worst forms of child labour in the cocoa sector. This has clearly not been enough: between 2008 and 2015, the number of child labourers actually increased, from 1.8 million to 2.1 million.

Meanwhile, the industry has set a new goal of achieving a 70% reduction in child labour by 2020. This means removing 1.4 million children from plantations over the next three years – and leaving 700,000 others still working in often appalling conditions.

Everyone in the chocolate chain – cocoa farmers, chocolate companies, retailers, governments and consumers – has a responsibility to solve child labour.

But as long as consumers continue to buy chocolate at prices that keep cocoa farmers in Ghana and the Ivory Coast below the poverty line, children will continue to be used as labour. And as long as we do not associate our chocolate with the children who make the product possible, the situation will not change.

Look into their eyes and read their stories.

1

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BITTER CHOCOLATE STORIES Joana Choumali Photography Marijn Heemskerk Texts

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4

8 18

Laeticia Douamba Augustin Kambou

136

Initiatives to Combat Child Labour

27

Cocoa: Who, What, Where?

146 154 162

Kassoum Kambou Sarata Zongo Alexis Pooda

38 46 54

Edyon Kambiré Yérie Valerie Kambou Ghislain Nikiéma

171

Tony’s Chocolonely’s Story

63

The Cocoa Poverty Cycle

182

Sami Josias Kambou

Sansan Arnaud Cedric Dibloni Bèbè Oussé Issaka Kabré

192

74

The Children in This Book

200 208 212

Timeline Index Collaboration

82 90

99

Child Labour in Cocoa Production

110 118 126

Chatérine Kambou Bassirou Traoré Abdoul Wakirou Mohamed Ilboudo

5

6

7

DON’T EVER TELL A CHILD THEY CAN GO TO SCHOOL IF YOU KNOW THEY NEVER WILL. IF YOU DO, YOU’LL BE SHATTERING A DREAM.

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Laeticia

9

My name is Laeticia. I’m 17.

My biggest wish is to go back to school. I want to finish secondary school and then train to be a nurse.

I went to school until I was 13. Then the money ran out.

My aunt knew someone I could work for. She said I could earn money for secondary school.

She took me to the Ivory Coast, where I started working on the cocoa plantation of a friend of hers. Other children worked there too, about 30 I think. Many of them came from Burkina Faso, but certainly not all of them.

Some days we didn’t get anything to eat. If we didn’t work hard enough, we were beaten by the guards. They used wooden sticks and motorbike cables.

That wasn’t the worst thing, though.

The tear now running down my cheek is because I’m thinking about the woman I lived with. She told me I was only there because my family didn’t want me anymore.

She said things like that if I was too ill to work or if I had done something wrong. Actually, she found a reason to say things like that every day.

I started believing her. Even when I ran away from the plantation, I was still scared that my family would be angry if I came home. I really thought that they didn’t want me anymore. But after two years, I had to get away from that place. My aunt had been getting money from the plantation owner all that time, but she never gave me any of it. And I hadn’t seen the inside of a school building once.

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Laeticia

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12

So, when I was sent to the market one day, I went to the bus station instead. I had planned it myself. The other children and I had talked about running away a few times, but never very seriously. We were watched all the time.

And the plantation owner told us: “I know a man at the bus station. If you run away, he’ll find you and bring you back.”

It was a long walk to the bus station and I was scared I’d be caught. I kept looking for places to hide in the bushes along the road. But the fear of being beaten again and hearing that woman’s words was stronger. That’s what kept me going.

At the bus station I asked the driver if he could take me to Burkina Faso. I didn’t have any money, but I did have my mother’s telephone number. We agreed that we would ring her in Ouagadougou, so that she could come and pay the ticket. She did, and I was allowed to live with my family again. So, it wasn’t true what that woman had been saying to me all those years.

When I’m older, I want to have four or five children.

Whether I have to send them away to work is in God’s hands. I’ll accept it, as long as they aren’t treated badly.

You have to treat a child well. You should never make false promises. Don’t ever tell a child they can go to school if you know it never will. If you do, you’ll be shattering a dream.

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Laeticia

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Laeticia

Kinderschokolade Greenpeace magazine (DE) 2009

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16

17

THE REASON WE HAD SO LITTLE MONEY WAS BECAUSE MY FATHER WAS TRYING TO BUILD A LIVELIHOOD, BUT HE DIED BEFORE HE WAS ABLE TO.

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Augustin

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My name is Augustin. I’m 16 years old.

I really want to go to school, but I don’t know who would pay my school fees.

I grew up in the Ivory Coast. From the age of seven I worked on my father’s cocoa plantation. Although we worked hard, we didn’t always have enough money to buy food.

My brothers and I were often hungry. I didn’t go to school.

The reason we had so little money was because my father was trying to build a livelihood, but he died before he was able to.

My mother took us back to Burkina Faso. I don’t know what happened to my father’s plantation. We don’t get any money from it anyway.

To children around the world, I would like to say: if you get the chance to go to school, take it. School opens your mind, and you learn things that will help you get a job.

School is a sort of guarantee for a child.

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Augustin

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Augustin

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From Cocoa Fields to Classrooms: Preventing Child Labour in Côte d’Ivoire UNICEF 2014

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SMILE JOY

Godiva… Sparks joy and deepens connections Godiva Belgium 1926 (TR) 2014-2015

Roshen (UA) 2009

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Cocoa: Who, What, Where?

To understand why children work on cocoa plantations, it is necessary to understand the chocolate industry and the role West Africa, the world’s largest cocoa producer, plays in it.

Consumption in the West “No! Are you crazy? I don’t eat chocolate. When I have money, I spend it on food my body needs. Nutritious food. Chocolate is far too expensive.”

So says our Ivorian driver Desiré Kamagaté. He is taking us to meet cocoa farmer Youekouama Yacinthe, who will give us a tour of his plantation. The asphalt road cuts through thick green jungle. From the back of the 4x4, our translator Konan agrees, “For the price of a bar of chocolate, I can buy seven kilos of rice or two chickens.”

The numbers are remarkable: almost three quarters of all the cocoa in the world comes from West Africa, and yet chocolate is rarely eaten there. Europeans are the biggest consumers, devouring more than half of all the chocolate produced. In second place are the North Americans, who consume 23%. Only 4% of global production is eaten in Africa. Many people in West Africa, including those who grow cocoa, have never tasted chocolate.

People simply cannot afford it. This is hardly surprising, given that the majority of cocoa farmers live below the poverty line of 1.90 dollars per person per day. Try buying a bar of chocolate for 4.50 dollars on that kind of income. Konan gives another reason for the low consumption rate: “Eating chocolate is not in our culture.”

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Cacao: Who, What, Where?

Origins in Central America Cocoa originated in Central America, where it has been cultivated since at least 1500 BC. From around 250 AD, the Maya are known to have consumed a drink made from ground cocoa beans mixed with water at official occasions such as weddings.

‘If you want to send your children to school, it is cocoa If you want to build a house, it is cocoa If you want to marry, it is cocoa If you want to buy clothes, it is cocoa If you want to buy a lorry, it is cocoa Whatever you want to do in this world It is with cocoa money that you do it’ Lyrics from a Ghanaian song from the 1950s

The Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés was the first European to recognise cocoa’s potential and, in 1528, returned to Spain with the beans and the equipment necessary to prepare them. The bitter brew initially received a lukewarm reception, and it was not until it was sweetened with sugar that it became popular in the Spanish court. The Spanish kept the drink secret for almost a century, before another wedding helped it to spread beyond Spain’s borders. In 1615, King Louis XIII married a Spanish princess. She is said to have given him cocoa as an engagement gift, introducing the drink to France, from where it quickly found its way to other European countries.

Konan understands the link between chocolate and romance: “The only time I buy chocolate is when I like a girl and want to try and win her heart over.”

Development in Europe The asphalt road we have been following turns into a bumpy dirt track, but the jungle on either side of the car continues. Every few hundred metres, people emerge from the undergrowth.

Konan points to the machetes in their hands and then to the dense green vegetation. “They use the machetes on their cocoa plantations. The cocoa trees are behind there.”

Those trees were planted long after the French king married the Spanish princess. Although that wedding resulted in the growing popularity of cocoa in Europe and entrepreneurs quickly recognised its commercial value, not a single tree had been planted in Africa. And the first encounter between West Africa and cocoa was hardly an auspicious one: the Spanish, French, British and Dutch established cocoa plantations in their colonies in the West Indies and South America and imported slaves from West Africa to work on them.

Throughout the 18th century, slavery continued to be the only link between cocoa and West Africa. From the outset, it was in Europe that the production of chocolate developed. A Frenchman invented the first hydraulic machine for grinding cocoa beans; a Dutchman invented a press for extracting cocoa butter; cocoa factories were opened in Spain, Germany and Switzerland; and by experimenting with different combinations of cocoa butter and powder, a British

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Cacao: Who, What, Where?

firm produced the first chocolate bar. These innovations made chocolate, until then consumed only as a drink and largely by the elite, available in solid form to the masses. The European masses, that is. The bean had still not arrived in Africa.

The Portuguese established plantations in the late 19th century. They became notorious for using Angolan workers who were slaves in all but name.

It was not until 1822 that the Portuguese planted the first cocoa trees on São Tomé, an island off Gabon. Demand remained limited, however, until Henri Nestlé, Rodolphe Lindt, Milton Hershey, William Cadbury and others came up with milk chocolate and chocolate with hazelnuts, adding sweetness and variety to the still relatively bitter concoction. This coincided with colonial expansion in Africa. The first colonial cocoa plantations were established in West Africa in the late 19th century. They became notorious for using mainly Angolan workers who were slaves in all but name, despite slavery having been officially abolished in 1875.

West Africa proved to have ideal growing conditions for the new crop. Cocoa trees thrive in the tropical belt between 20° north and 10° south of the equator, where the high temperatures and humidity, plentiful rainfall and natural forest cover all encourage growth. Young cocoa trees, in particular, have to develop initially in the shade of other trees. Today, West Africa produces more than 3 million tonnes of cocoa a year, 73% of global production.

Under an awning in his village, protected from the direct sunlight like his cocoa trees, Yacinthe makes the essential point. “You can’t do much with a cocoa bean straight off the tree. You have to make something with it, and of course that’s usually chocolate. I think it’s a pity that that doesn’t happen here.”

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Cacao: Who, What, Where?

An estimated 8 million people in the Ivory Coast are financially dependent on cocoa, either directly or indirectly. In 2015, the cocoa industry accounted for around 15.3% of the gross domestic product (GDP). In 2014, cocoa made up 37% of Ivorian exports. Turnover: 4.4 billion dollars.

At a total value of 2.6 billion dollars in 2014, cocoa made up around 20% of Ghana’s exports, making it a significant contributor to GDP. Cocoa is also an important source of revenue for the government, which collects around 20% of all taxes from cocoa exports.

53% Europe

23% United States

9%

Rest North- and South America

40%

Ivory Coast

21% Ghana

5%

Ecuador

5%

Brazil

6%

Rest of South America

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Cacao: Who, What, Where?

13%

Rest of Afrika

5%

Japan

2%

China

1% India

2%

Rest of Asia

4%

Africa

9%

Indonesia

Main cocoa production and consumption countries production

consumption

Source: Cacaobarometer 2015.

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Cacao: Who, What, Where?

2%

Australia

Production and earnings almost entirely outside West Africa Chocolate production consists roughly of five steps: 1.

2.

Until the early 1980s, farmers in West Africa could earn a living from cocoa.

In 1980, the international cocoa price exceeded 3,000 dollars per tonne. But by around 2000, the price had dropped to below 1,000 dollars per tonne.

3.

4.

5.

Almost 5 million farmers, around 3 million of whom are in West Africa, cultivate cocoa. Most of them are small-scale producers, who are unable to grow enough to earn a living income at the current cocoa prices.

Cooperatives or intermediaries buy the beans from the farmer. In Ghana and the Ivory Coast, the minimum sale price is set by the government. This is the farm-gate price. The beans are then sold to traders. In Ghana, the government acts as a trader. The traders trade the beans on the international market. The international trade price largely determines the price farmers receive for their cocoa because the international trade price, along with other political choices, is used to set the farm-gate price.

Cocoa processors buy the beans and turn them into cocoa mass, cocoa butter and cocoa powder. These days, many cocoa processors also buy direct, often making them traders as well. As a result of extensive consolidation, the three largest cocoa processors control more than 70% of the market.

Chocolate manufacturers buy the cocoa mass and cocoa butter to make chocolate. They add flavourings and other ingredients, shape the mixture into bars and package the finished product. The eight largest chocolate manufacturers have a combined market share of 61%.

Supermarkets buy the chocolate and put it on their shelves where we, the consumers, purchase it.

As Yacinthe indicates, most of these steps take place outside West Africa.

Most of the money in this multi-billiondollar industry is earned outside West Africa. Most cocoa farmers exist below the poverty line.

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Cacao: Who, What, Where?

The international cocoa prices are determined on the stock markets of London and New York. The world’s largest transshipment cocoa port is Amsterdam. A significant amount of cocoa is processed in the Netherlands, Belgium and North America. Most of the major chocolate makers are based in the United States and Europe. The bars are sold mostly in Western supermarkets to Western consumers. Global annual sales of chocolate products are estimated at around 120 billion dollars.

In other words, most of the money in this multi-billion-dollar industry is earned outside West Africa. Every actor in the chain has an interest in buying cocoa as cheaply as possible. Meanwhile, most cocoa farmers live below the poverty line. And that’s where problems begin for their children.

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Cacao: Who, What, Where?

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National Geographic (FR) 2001

PRE SMILE MIUM

らのヴァレンタイン、アルフォー ト。アルフォートミニ・チョコレー ト。プレミアムチョコレート Alfort mini (JP) 2016

IMAGI SMILE NATION

Feed your imagination Wonka (CH) 2009

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IF YOU ASK ME: WHAT DID YOU ACTUALLY LEARN ON THE PLANTATION? THEN I’D SAY: FOOTBALL.

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Edyon

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My name is Edyon and I’m 18 years old.

As a child, I dreamed of becoming a football player.

I wanted to be a winger in the national team. But my life took a different course.

When I was five, my father died. Shortly after, my uncle came to visit. He took me to the Ivory Coast, where we worked on his cocoa plantation.

Every day, we walked along a narrow path through a thick forest to reach the plantation. I found that quite scary because there were big snakes there. You never saw them because they were in the bushes. But I was always afraid I’d step on one and it would bite me.

It was hard work. When it was time to harvest, I cut the cocoa pods from the tree. The rest of the year, I planted seeds, ploughed the land or cleared the bushes. I usually used a machete, even though I was only six years old when I started.

Sometimes things went wrong. One day, I swung too far while I was cutting the grass. The machete went into my foot. I was taken to my uncle’s house and he took care of the wound. But I wasn’t given any time for the wound to heal. The next day, I was back at work again.

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Edyon

Child Labour: The Dark Side of Chocolate 16x9 Global News (CA) 2012

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In total, I worked on the plantation for four years. Looking back, I think I was too young for that work. I was six when I began and ten when my uncle brought me back to my mother. I didn’t earn any money.

I didn’t see my mother once in that time. I missed her.

My uncle’s wife wasn’t nice to me. She looked after her own three children much better. So, for example, she would give them food but not me. I was lucky because her youngest son sometimes shared his food with me. The other children didn’t.

One thing I know for sure: I’ll always treat all the children I meet as if they were my own.

Luckily, I wasn’t completely alone. I had a good friend, Timothy. On Sundays we played football with the other children. So, if you ask me: what did you actually learn on the plantation? Then I’d say: football.

My dream of becoming a footballer has now become a dream of opening a sewing workshop because I’m learning to be a tailor.

To children around the world, I would like to say: if you’re not lucky enough to go to school, don’t blame yourself.

Try to learn a trade, like tailor or mechanic. That way you can take care of yourself, like I hope to do one day.

Although… if a scout asked me if I wanted to train as a footballer, I wouldn’t say no. That dream hasn’t completely vanished.

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Edyon

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45

I DON’T THINK A COCOA PLANTATION IS ANY PLACE FOR A CHILDREN. I THINK ABOUT ALL THE THINGS THAT COULD HAPPEN TO THEM.

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Valerie

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My name is Valerie. I’m 18.

I don’t think a cocoa plantation is any place for a child.

I worked with my brothers and sisters on my father’s plantation after school. I was always tired.

I had to carry the cocoa pods in a large basket on my head to my parents. I don’t know exactly how many kilos each load weighed, but I do know that it hurt my neck and shoulders.

But that’s nothing compared to what happened to my sister. She was working one day when it started to rain heavily, so she went to shelter under a tree. The tree fell over. She was killed instantly.

That’s the moment I thought: I need to leave this place.

My parents didn’t want to let me go; they thought I should keep working for them. I secretly went to my uncle in a town nearby. He gave me money for the bus back to Burkina Faso, and I went to live with my brothers.

When I think of my brothers and sisters who are still working on the plantations in the Ivory Coast, I get very sad. I think about all the things that could happen to them. There are a lot of trees there. One of them could fall over and I’ll lose another brother or sister.

That’s why I want to become a really good tailor and earn as much money as possible. I’ll use that money to get all of my brothers and sisters off the plantations.

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Valerie

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Valerie

51

52

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WHEN I WAS 15, I SAW SOME MEN IN MY VILLAGE WHO HAD COME BACK FROM THE IVORY COAST ON SHINY MOTORBIKES. I WANTED ONE TOO.

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Ghislain

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My name is Ghislain and I’m 17 years old.

When I was 15, I saw some men in my village who had come back from the Ivory Coast on shiny motorbikes.

I wanted one too. I heard that the men had bought the bikes with money they’d earned on cocoa plantations.

My cousin went to the plantations, and I went with him.

I had already dropped out of school, and there was no work in Burkina Faso. I wanted to earn enough in the Ivory Coast for that bike.

We had to work really hard, about 11 hours every day. At the beginning of the day, the supervisors gave us a piece of land that we had to clear with a machete. At the end of the day, I was so tired I just wanted to leave. But I stayed for four months.

There were a lot of children from other countries, such as Mali and Togo. But most of them came from Burkina Faso.

We all slept in wooden huts in the middle of the bush. The huts were not comfortable at all. We slept on thin mats on the ground. We scrounged food wherever we could; sometimes from the next village; sometimes we cooked for ourselves using what we found in the field.

I went back home because I earned too little. On a good day, I earned about 1,000 CFA (1.50 euros). On a bad day, no more than 750 CFA (1.15 euros). I spent everything I earned on food and the bus ticket home.

I still don’t have my bike.

If I have children, I won’t tell them they have to work on a cocoa plantation. It’s much too hard work and for too little money.

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Ghislain

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Ghislain

Behind a Bitter Sweet Industry – Inside Big Chocolate’s Child Labor Problem Fortune magazine (USA) 2016

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HEA SMILE VEN Sixpence worth of heaven Cadbury (UK) 1959

PAS SMILE SION

Crafted with perfection and passion by Lindt’s master chocolatiers.

Lindt Excellence (CH) 2005

The Cocoa Poverty Cycle

Almost all cocoa farmers in West Africa live below the poverty line.

A tour of Yacinthe’s plantation makes it clear why.

Low productivity Yacinthe takes a dusty path to his cocoa plantation. His shoulders are slightly hunched, and he has the relaxed gait of someone who has walked this route thousands of times. A machete hangs loosely in his hand, almost an extension of his arm. A few minutes later, he stops by a tree next to the path. “Look, a cocoa tree,� he says.

This is not what most Westerners imagine when they think of a cocoa plantation. It is more like a forest, a 7-hectare forest, which is big by West African standards: most cocoa plantations are between 1.5 and 5 hectares. Amid the tangle of vegetation, the cocoa tree seems almost like an accident.

Most African plantations look like this. Productivity is low. Reliable figures are hard to come by, but most estimates suggest 450-500 kilos per hectare. At the current cocoa price, this is not enough to support a family. As a result, most farmers and their families live below the poverty line of 1.90 dollars per person per day.

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The Cocoa Poverty Cycle

A vicious circle: relation between low yield, low income and child labour in West Africa Living below the poverty line prevents investment in other sources of income and education

weak organisation

high input prices

bad infrastructure

small farm size

low farm-gate price

no access to loans and credit

low income from cocoa

low usage of agro inputs

child labour inadequate: - maintenance - pest and disease control - nutrient supply

low yields

age of cocoa farms (a cocoa tree’s lifespan is 35 years)

Source: M. Wessel, P.M.F. Quist-Wessel / NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences 74–75 (2015) 1–7; Tony’s Chocolonely Annual Fair Report 2015/2016

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The Cocoa Poverty Cycle

Lack of knowledge and resources to increase yields Yacinthe stops at another tree. He swings his machete at one of the branches, hitting it hard several times before it crashes to the ground. “You have to prune this kind of growth to let more sunlight through. Then the tree produces more fruit. I learnt that during a training course at our cooperative.”

Although most cocoa farmers are second- or third-generation growers, they have relatively little knowledge about how to increase yields. Cooperatives can therefore be a valuable source of information.

The cacoa tree is a delicate diva.

She needs a lot of attention and care Yacinthe, like all the farmers in his village, is a member of a wellfunctioning cooperative. He is among the fortunate few: only around 30% of farmers in West Africa are part of a cooperative, many of which function poorly or not at all, leaving farmers with little access to this kind of training.

The same applies to the other benefits a well-functioning cooperative offers, such as providing loans and buying fertilisers and pesticides at wholesale prices.

These fertilisers and pesticides are crucial to increase productivity.

Although the cocoa tree thrives in West Africa’s warm, wet climate, it is a diva. It requires fertile soil, is highly susceptible to fungi and disease, and its leaves and fruit are prized by pests, like the squirrel that Yacinthe chases from one of his trees.

It takes four to five years for a cocoa tree to bear fruit. It peaks at ten to 20 years, then gradually declines up to around 35. Farmers who are unable to replace older trees with new trees at least four years before they reach the end of their life face the prospect of declining production.

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The Cocoa Poverty Cycle

“It’s very hard to earn a living from cocoa. Actually, it’s almost impossible. The price is too low.

I wish the government would raise the price.”

Koffi Kouma, 67 (cocoa farmer, Ivory Coast)

“We can only sell cocoa twice a year. At those times, we can just about manage, but we don’t earn enough to save. Right now, it’s not the cocoa season, and we don’t have any money.

I have six children. I hope they will be able to look after me later on. I want them to be civil servants; then they’ll get paid every month of the year, and they won’t be dependent on the cocoa season.”

Aya Yvon N’Guessan, 54 (cocoa farmer’s wife, Ivory Coast)

Production is also affected by weather variations. Yacinthe picks up a black cocoa pod from the ground. “It’s rotten. A few years ago, they all looked like this. We had too much rain; the fruit couldn’t handle it.” The opposite is expected in the future, namely more frequent droughts as a result of climate change. Both have the same effect: a failed cocoa harvest.

Yacinthe sighs. “And no cocoa means no income.”

Cocoa is the main source of income Most West African cocoa farmers are dependent on cocoa for their livelihood: for 78% of farmers in Ghana and 90% in the Ivory Coast, cocoa is their only source of income.

Yacinthe points around him. “That’s a banana tree over there, that’s a plantain and we grow yams as well. There’s more here than just cocoa, and if we find buyers, we sell what we can. But it doesn’t bring in very much. I couldn’t even say how much I earn from it each year. Most of what we harvest we eat ourselves.”

With little or no education, people turn to cocoa farming because it is the only thing they can do.

This reliance on cocoa is largely due to the fact that farmers lack the resources – and knowledge – to make any meaningful investments in alternative crops. Like so many others, Yacinthe did not finish secondary school. “Before I could take my final exams, my father died. I had to take over his plantation in order to provide for the family, which I hope my children will one day do for me.”

His story is repeated time and again throughout the region: with little or no education, people turn to cocoa farming because it is the only thing they can do. In addition, monocropping makes farmers vulnerable to failed harvests and puts them in a weak negotiating position. With no other income options, they have to sell their cocoa, even if it is at a price that is too low to live on.

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The Cocoa Poverty Cycle

Price breakdown of a bar of chocolate

35.2% manufacturer

6.6% farmers

6.3% transport & trade

7.6% process & grinders

44.2% retail and taxes

Source: Cocoa Barometer 2015

67

“My husband and I had a cocoa plantation in the Ivory Coast.

But just when it was going well, we were chased off the land.

People came and told us that the land wasn’t ours because we were from Burkina Faso.

We had to start over again.

The first time, we still had some money and were able to buy a new piece of land. But we were chased off that as well. Now I’m back in Burkina Faso. I feel safe here. At least I know that no one will chase me away.”

Salamata Kambou (age unknown, cocoa farmer’s widow, Burkina Faso)

Unclear tenure rights and political unrest Yacinthe was lucky to be able to take over the plantation when his father died. Unclear inheritance and tenure rights are a widespread problem. In several cases, farmers have been driven from their land by people claiming to have pre-existing rights.

In the Ivory Coast, only Ivorian nationals are allowed to own land.

When civil war broke out in 2011, thousands of farmers without Ivorian nationality were forced off their land. It was one of the many consequences of the war that served to deepen farmer poverty.

Farmers have no control over prices In early 2017, the cocoa price plummeted. At the time this book went to print, September 2017, the price was 37% lower than the year before. At the previous price, many farmers already lived below the poverty line. The current price is pushing them to the brink, and there is nothing they can do about it because that price, the farm-gate price, is set by the Ghanaian and Ivorian governments. The price-setting mechanism is supposed to protect farmers. Before the market was regulated, traders took advantage of farmers’ desperate need for cash, driving down the price around the times when school fees or other payments were due.

In theory, buyers can pay above the farm-gate price, but why would they? Farmers are in a weak negotiating position.

The farm-gate price is based on the international trade price, which is determined on the stock markets of London and New York.

Generally speaking, the government estimates what that price will be, deducts what it wants in taxes and thus arrives at the farmgate price.

In theory, buyers can pay above the farm-gate price, but why would they? Farmers are in a weak negotiating position. “We’re not organised,” says Yacinthe. “If I demanded a higher price, my neighbour would almost certainly undercut me. And if I refused to sell, where would I find another buyer? And how would I deliver my cocoa to them? I don’t have a truck, and last month the roads around here were still flooded.”

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The Cocoa Poverty Cycle

Result: child labour In short, low prices mean low incomes. Without money, farmers cannot increase their productivity or diversify into other crops, so their incomes remain low. Without money, they cannot increase their productivity… and so on. This is the poverty cycle in which cocoa farmers in West Africa are trapped.

Another consequence of this cycle is the inability to save for old age. Farmers can only hope that their children will look after them.

The more children they have, the greater the chance of a decent retirement. And if farmers cannot afford to hire labour, what do they do with their children while they are young? Exactly.

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The Cocoa Poverty Cycle

“I wish our husbands could allocate land that would be ours if they died. At the moment, we can’t inherit that land. If our husbands die, then we and our children won’t have any money.”

Solange Adjoua Yoboué, 46 (cocoa farmer’s wife, Ivory Coast)

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TASTY SMILE

Chocolates ricos por dentro y por fuera Confitones Ricolino (MX) 1983

EMO SMILE TIONS

Relleno de emociones Bon o bon (AR) 2006

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The Dark Side of Chocolate Bastard Film & TV (DK) 2010

IT’S VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU SWING THE MACHETE AWAY FROM YOUR BODY. IN THE BEGINNING, I COULDN’T DO THAT VERY WELL.

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Cedric

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Cedric

My name is Cedric. I’m 15 years old.

As a ten-year-old, I worked on my uncle’s plantation.

It’s very important that you swing the machete away from your body. In the beginning, I couldn’t do that very well and would chop my foot or my shin.

The first time I cut myself, my uncle took care of the wound.

After that, he said I’d done it on purpose and had to keep working. I smeared the wounds with a paste I made from ash and water. It stung a lot; it was like my skin was on fire.

But it made a crust form on the wound faster.

At those moments, I missed my parents. I wanted to be with them. In the four years I worked on the cocoa plantation, I didn’t speak to them once.

The first time I spoke to my father again was when he rang my uncle. I had asked a neighbour who was going to Burkina Faso to visit my father and ask him to ring me.

The neighbour worked for a bus company and was always travelling between the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso.

It was the same man who’d originally brought me to the Ivory Coast. I don’t know if he takes children with him regularly.

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Cedric

When my father heard that I wanted to talk to him, he rang my uncle. He gave the telephone to me. I was so happy to hear my father’s voice again. I told him that I wanted to come home. My father listened to me and told my uncle to give me money for the bus. That’s how I came back to Burkina Faso.

I like being back. My father may be poor, but if I get sick, he’ll do everything he can to make me better. I know that for sure.

When I worked on the plantation, I thought I would never be able to leave. I felt abandoned by my family. Still, I’ll never blame them. The only reason that my parents let me go is because they’re poor. They thought I’d have a better life in the Ivory Coast.

If I could make a wish, I’d wish I could be a soldier. Then you’re sure that you’ll earn money every month. I think I’d look good in the uniform too. But to become a soldier, you have to have finished secondary school, and I haven’t.

So, now I’m training to be a mechanic. I want to earn money as soon as possible because I want my sister to go to school. My parents can’t afford it, and someone has to pay for it.

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Cedric

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SOMETIMES I DREAM ABOUT BEING A JOURNALIST. THEN YOU CAN TRAVEL THE WORLD AND TELL PEOPLE STORIES AND THINGS THEY DON’T KNOW.

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Bèbè

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Chocolate Child Slaves CNN 2012

I’m 15 and my name is Bèbè.

I was born in the Ivory Coast. My father had a cocoa plantation there. First, he worked on someone else’s plantation, but after a while he was able to buy his own plantation.

I started helping my father on the land when I was ten. My brothers cut the cocoa pods from the tree, and I collected them. I worked hard, but when I was tired, my father said I could stop. In those moments I felt happy because my father loved me, and he didn’t want me to suffer.

When my father died, I moved back to Burkina Faso with my mother and brothers and sisters. I’m happy now too.

I go to school. In my free time, I like to play with dogs. I’ve got a white one. His name is Tutu, and he makes me laugh.

He follows me everywhere and I share everything with him.

Sometimes I dream about being a journalist. Then you can travel the world and tell stories. You can tell people things they don’t know, things from places they’ve never been. But I haven’t been to school very much. And now I’m training to be a tailor.

I hope to be a good tailor and to have my own workshop.

If I have children, I hope they won’t have to work on a cocoa plantation. I want them to be able to go to school, and to learn a different trade from me. Doctor, for example; and not an animal doctor but a real doctor; a doctor who makes people better. I mean, I love my dog, but I love people a lot more.

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Bèbè

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Bèbè

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I WAS HOPING TO MAKE SOME MONEY, BUT THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN. I EARNED NOTHING, EVEN THOUGH I HAD TO WORK REALLY HARD.

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Issaka

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Issaka

I’m 17 and my name is Issaka.

The rainy season in Burkina Faso is very short. The rest of the year it’s completely dry and there’s no work. Almost everyone here is a farmer, and nothing grows on this dry land.

The result: my parents didn’t have any money to send me to school. There were no jobs for me. I was 15 and had nothing to do.

My brother worked on a cocoa plantation in the Ivory Coast. The rainy season there is much longer than in Burkina Faso. You can grow much more, almost all year round.

My brother thought I should come and work with him on the plantation. I did for a few months.

I was hoping to make some money, but that didn’t happen.

I earned nothing, even though I had to work really hard.

I didn’t think I could say anything about it to the owner of the plantation because my brother had got me the job and I didn’t want to go behind his back. My brother did earn a little, but he didn’t give me any of it. I didn’t ask him for money either because that’s not what you do.

Eventually, my brother paid for my bus ticket. I’m glad to be home. I’m definitely not going back to the cocoa plantation. Life there is much too hard.

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Issaka

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Child Workers Boost Ivory Coast Chocolate Industry Al Jazeera 2015

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PLEA SMILE SURE More pleasure, less guilt Hershey’s 100 Calorie Crisp Wafer Bars (US) 2006-2007

FRIENDS SMILE

トモッキーこれからも、ともだち Pocky (JP) 2017

Child Labour in Cocoa Production

Child labour is used on cocoa plantations in West Africa. How many children are involved, why do they work there and what do they do?

Child labour At least 20 children come running as soon as our driver parks the car in a dusty field near a village in the heart of the Ivorian cocoagrowing region. There is a goal at each end of the field. We find out later that the children do not have a football, but a bundle of old plastic serves the purpose.

The children swarm around us. Konan, our translator, asks a girl what she did today. “Worked on the plantation,” she answers happily. A friend, her eyes wide, grabs the girl’s arm and whispers something in her ear; the girl walks away shocked.

According to the latest figures from Tulane University, the authority on child labour in West Africa, around 2.2 million children worked on cocoa plantations in Ghana and the Ivory Coast in the 2013-2014 season – an average of one child per cocoa plantation.

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Child Labour in Cocoa Production

“Whenever I give a training about child labour in a cocoagrowing community, I always start a conversation with the participants. First, they say: ‘I used to help my father on the farm. Why shouldn’t I let my child do that?’ I say: ‘We’re not asking you not to let your children help you at all. We’re just asking you to send your children to school and not let them do any dangerous work.’

Some children did so legally. Children in the Ivory Coast can work at the age of 16 and in Ghana at the age of 15. From 13 they can do light work, as long as it does not interfere with school and their general development. This is referred to as ‘child work’.

I already see a difference. More children are going to school.

People really want things to change. But sometimes there isn’t a school nearby, or it’s no more than a bamboo hut without a teacher. It’s important that we get more good schools.”

Child work is a rare occurrence, however: of the 2.26 million children found to be working on plantations, 2.12 million were child labourers.

Only 140,000 children worked on cocoa farms legally.

Mariama Koné (age unknown, trainer, formerly for Fairtrade, Ivory Coast)

Any children who do not meet these requirements are considered to be performing child labour, which is illegal. This includes all children who work in slave-like conditions or perform dangerous tasks, regardless of their age.

The Tulane study also showed that child labour in the cocoa industry had increased by 20% compared to 2008-2009, the previous period surveyed. This may be partly due to a rise in cocoa production – 40% in the Ivory Coast and 30% in Ghana – and the disruptive effects of the 2011 civil war in the Ivory Coast. However, the findings suggest that child labour only increased in the Ivory Coast, whereas the number of child labourers in Ghana declined by 3%.

The dangerous work children do The children are still crowding around us, but Konan has become pensive. A boy standing in front of him has a bandage around his shin. Konan asks him about it. The boy unwinds it and throws it on the ground. Not that it can get any dirtier: it is already covered with orange dust. The boy shows us a cut with a thick grey scab on it.

Almost half of child labourers are between five and 11 years old.

The cause of the cut is unclear. Neither is it clear how a girl whose leg is wrapped in a piece of colourful batik injured herself.

However, research conducted by Tulane shows that the majority of child labourers on cocoa plantations are engaged in dangerous activities. More than 70% of them use sharp tools such as a machete or scythe. These are the cause of most accidents. Young children, in particular, do not have the strength or coordination required to handle the tools and regularly injure themselves.

Almost half of child labourers are between five and 11 years old.

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Child Labour in Cocoa Production

The buckets of cocoa pods and water they have to carry on their heads are too heavy for their developing bodies. Children often carry more than 20% of their body weight, putting considerable strain on their axial skeleton and cervical spine.

At the same time, more and more children are required to spray pesticides, usually without protection. More than one in five children working in cocoa in West Africa are exposed to toxic gases in this way.

Land clearing activities are considered especially dangerous to children. In addition to injuries sustained as a direct result of land clearing, for example from falling trees, smoke inhalation from burning vegetation can have long-lasting respiratory effects.

Farmers have no money to hire labour and so they use their children.

Poverty and other factors How can more than 2 million children be doing this kind of work?

The main reason, says Konan, is poverty. Cocoa cultivation is labour intensive. Farmers have no money to hire labour and so they use their children; but there are a number of other factors that encourage child labour.

Broken homes and gender inequality It soon becomes clear why Konan’s mood has changed. He points to the boy with the bandaged leg. “Look at what he’s wearing,” he says.

A pair of men’s trousers has been cut into shorts. They are tied around the boy’s waist with a piece of string. A torn shirt hangs off his shoulders and on his feet are bath slippers a few sizes too big.

“It reminds me of me. That’s what I used to wear,” Konan says. His father died when he was ten. His mother had already passed away and he had no other family who was willing or able to look after him. So, he went to work on a cocoa plantation. All he had was the clothes on his back.

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Child Labour in Cocoa Production

Children (5-17) in agricultural households in the cocoa-growing areas of the Ivory Coast and Ghana

children not working children in cocoa production doing hazardous work children doing other work in cocoa production children doing different work

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Child Labour in Cocoa Production

2008-2009

growth 2013-2014

+ 2%

total 1,998,943

+ 18%

total 2,032,267

+ 140%

- 11%

All children 5-17 years: 5,710,938 (2008/2009), 5,969,385 (2013/2014) Source: Tulane Child Survey 2008/2009 and 2013/2014.

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Child Labour in Cocoa Production

total 228,140

total 1,170,037

Konan’s story shows that children here are vulnerable if they lose a parent, particularly a father. Women are often unable to inherit land or assets. Although women work on the land, like their husbands, any income belongs to the man, leaving women virtually penniless.

“What’s a woman supposed to do if her husband dies?” says Konan.

“She has to remarry. Her new husband doesn’t always want to or is unable to take care of her children. So, the children have to pay their own way.”

A shortage of schools and migrating children One in five children working on cocoa plantations does not live with his or her biological parents. Because the nearest school is often too far to walk to, children move to other villages and work alongside their lessons to pay for their food and school fees.

The Ivory Coast has thousands of migrant children, mostly from impoverished Burkina Faso and Mali.

It is a practice that goes back generations. People are used to children moving to other villages – or even other countries – to work or go to school. The Ivory Coast, in particular, attracts a high number of migrants, including children, from poorer countries in the region such as Burkina Faso and Mali.

The practice can play into the hands of traffickers. Parents are told that their children will go to school and be well cared for. In reality, they are often sold to work on cocoa plantations, sometimes for years.

The conditions are appalling: the children – some of them younger than ten – work long days, receive no salary and are frequently required to find and cook their own food. Many of them are kept on the plantation with threats. Parents often do not know where their children are.

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Child Labour in Cocoa Production

Lack of knowledge and confusion As a result of poverty and migration, farmers have long been accustomed to children working on their plantations. But why do they let so many children do dangerous work?

“I think it’s because a lot of farmers don’t know exactly what’s illegal and what’s not,” says Konan.

Farmers often believe they are educating children by letting them work on a plantation.

Confusing national and international legislation does not help, and many parents who themselves worked on plantations under similar circumstances struggle to understand that some of the tasks may be harmful. Farmers often believe they are educating children by letting them work on a plantation, even though they have been told they are not allowed to. This may explain the girl earlier, whispering a warning in her friend’s ear: it is better to say nothing about working on a plantation, even if you are older than 13 and may well be doing so legally.

The risk, of course, is that child labour will be driven underground and become even harder to detect – not that the local police are likely to check. “Do you see a police station anywhere?” says Konan. “People don’t report this kind of thing to the police either.

That’s not their way.”

“If a cocoa farmer had more opportunities to earn money, for example by being able to sell cashew nuts, coffee and cotton as well, then I really can’t see him intentionally letting his child do dangerous work. Poverty is a big problem.

In addition, it’s important that farmers themselves understand that a child shouldn’t be doing dangerous work. I recently saw a television programme about Japanese sushi makers. They let their children work with sharp knives from a young age, to teach them the trade. They don’t see it as dangerous at all. That’s the same here with the farmers and the machetes.”

Youssouf N’Djore, 46 (programme coordinator at a humanitarian organisation, Ivory Coast)

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Child Labour in Cocoa Production

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SMILE LIKE Piace a tutti i bambini del mondo Kinder Brioss (IT) 2016

HEALTH SMILE

Gezondheid met lepels Van Houten (NL) 1925-1926

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WHEN MY FATHER DIED, HIS WIFE DIDN’T WANT ME ANYMORE. SO, MY UNCLE TOOK ME TO HIS FARM IN GHANA.

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Cathérine

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My name is Cathérine and I’m 16.

I started praying when my uncle died.

I lost my mother when I was three, and my father took me to live with his wife and children in the Ivory Coast. I don’t know how old I was when he died.

When my father died, his second wife didn’t want me anymore. So, my uncle took me to his farm in Ghana.

We grew cocoa, bananas and plantains. It was hard work, but my uncle was kind to me and let me go to school.

Then my uncle died too. I started asking God to make my life better. I told God that I really wanted to find work.

Soon after, I met a man who was looking for children to learn a trade in Ouagadougou. I now live with six other girls and a few boys in a centre where I’m learning to sew.

Sometimes I sit with the caretaker’s wife. She’s nice to me. The other girls and I don’t always understand each other very well. They come from a different region. I’m often lonely.

I don’t know where I’ll go when I finish the training. My grandmother is the only person I have left, but she’s too old to take care of me. My father’s family doesn’t want to help me because I’m the only child with a different mother.

I still pray every day. I ask God to give me everything I need. But mostly I ask him for work.

I hope to have a sewing workshop one day with lots of customers. I only want to think about getting married and having children after I’ve opened the workshop.

I don’t really trust men. I want to be sure I can take care of myself before I get involved with a man.

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Cathérine

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CathĂŠrine

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HE PROMISED ME MONEY BUT NEVER GAVE ME ANY. HE LET ME DOWN. WILL I EVER FORGIVE HIM? MAYBE.

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Bassirou

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Bassirou

My name is Bassirou. I’m 15.

I was 11 when a friend of my father’s took me to the Ivory Coast. He promised me that I would earn money. My family needed it because my father had just died, and my mother didn’t earn enough to take care of me.

We took a bus to the Ivory Coast. On the way, police officers and other men in uniform asked us for our papers. I don’t know exactly what my father’s friend said, but we never had any problems. We were allowed to continue our journey.

He took me to the cocoa plantation of a man he knew, where I started working. There were a lot of other children. Most of them came from Soubré, the place where the plantation was. I was the only one from Burkina Faso. Some of them could speak a little bit of French, like me, so we could talk to each other. But we couldn’t say very much.

Most of the time I worked with a machete. That’s where the scars on my legs come from. This long one here is from the time I chopped down a low branch, giving it a sharp point. But I couldn’t see it because of all the other plants growing around it.

I walked into the point and sliced open my whole shin. I had a lot of other accidents like that.

I worked five days a week, ten or 11 hours a day, every week, for four years.

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Bassirou

The cocoa farmer gave money to my father’s friend.

I don’t know how much. He never gave me any of it. Then one day, he was gone. It was very sudden. He hadn’t said anything to me about leaving. Now I was completely alone. Without any money.

I wanted to go home. But how? I saw a man driving through the village. I saw from his face that he came from my region. He recognised me too and spoke to me. He gave me money to get back to Burkina Faso.

I went to Ouagadougou to find work. I don’t know the city, because I’m not from there. I wandered around for a while until I found an unfinished house. I slept there for ten nights. I was found by a woman who invited me to come and live in a centre and train to be a mechanic.

In a few months, I’ll finish the training. I don’t know where I’ll go after that. I don’t know where my mother lives.

I don’t even know if she’s still alive. I haven’t seen or spoken to her since I went to the Ivory Coast four years ago.

That makes me sad. I miss my mother. And I feel betrayed by my father’s friend. He promised me money but never gave me any. He let me down. If you asked me what I would like to say to him, I wouldn’t have an answer.

Will I ever forgive him? Maybe. But it will be very difficult.

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Bassirou

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I WAS TEN WHEN I CAME TO WORK ON THE PLANTATION. FOUR MEN WATCHED US ALL DAY. THEY BEAT US IF THEY THOUGHT WE WEREN’T WORKING HARD ENOUGH.

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Mohamed

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My name is Mohamed and I’m 16.

I worked with at least 30 other children on the plantation.

Four men watched us all day. They beat us if they thought we weren’t working hard enough. We weren’t allowed to rest until all the work was finished. I was scared of those men.

I was ten when I came to work on the plantation. My parents didn’t have any money to send me to school. My aunt said she knew someone nearby with a cocoa field where I could go and work.

I didn’t mind; I was just happy to be earning some money for my parents. But the people there weren’t nice to me.

In the end, I became very unhappy.

We had to work all day. When it was time to harvest, we cut the pods from the tree. Other children picked them up and took them to the village. The rest of the year we chopped down plants with a machete, so the cocoa trees could grow well. Or we weeded the land with a big hoe. Everything was done by hand; there weren’t any machines. It was hard work, and I couldn’t go to school.

The plantation owner gave my aunt money. My aunt also gave some money to my father, but I don’t know how much.

I never saw any of it.

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Mohamed

I lived with my aunt. I was allowed to see my parents twice a week. I didn’t tell them how I was treated on the plantation. My friends worked there too; we were all in the same boat. I didn’t want my parents to take me home. It may sound strange, but I didn’t want to leave my friends.

I don’t like to talk about the five years I worked on the plantation. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that children work on cocoa plantations, but they should be treated well.

Children shouldn’t be beaten or not given food if they don’t work hard enough. Which is what happened to me.

Now I’m learning to be a tailor. I want to be a stylist. Then I want to live in New York with my wife and children. When I think about it, I imagine high buildings and snowflakes whirling out of the sky. Some of the flakes are red. I’ll make a suit for the American president. That’s my dream.

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Mohamed

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Behind a Bitter Sweet Industry – Inside Big Chocolate’s Child Labor Problem Fortune magazine (USA) 2016

SMILE LOVE We ♥ “pure” Meiji milk chocolate (JP) 2009

부드럽고 진한 쵸코렡

SMILE SOFT

Lotte Choco Pie (KR) 1989

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Initiatives To Combat Child Labour

Initiatives to Combat Child Labour

What is being done to combat child labour? A visit to a cooperative in the Ivory Coast provides more insight.

Certification The Ecojad warehouse is dark, and the air is thick and sweet. This is where the cooperative stores its cocoa beans. A door at the back leads to an office.

Director Serge Lazare Ehouman is at his desk. On the wall behind him, among posters printed with slogans like ‘We say no to child labour in cocoa’, is a Fairtrade certificate.

Ecojad is Fairtrade certified, which means it has to meet a number of standards. These include having a policy in place to combat child labour and providing training on the issue to cooperative members.

Chocolate companies that buy cocoa from the cooperative pay a premium on top of the farm-gate price and can then display the Fairtrade logo on their products. At the cooperative’s annual general meeting, the farmers decide how the premium is spent.

Ehouman walks over to a long box in the corner of the room, cuts open the packaging and takes out a machete. “We bought these in bulk, for example,” he says. The cooperative also buys fertiliser, pesticides and rubber boots, which would be unaffordable for individual farmers. The farmers also decide together how much of the premium is spent on training courses and how much they receive as cash.

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Initiatives to Combat Child Labour

The certification organisations in the Ivory Coast and Ghana all work in roughly the same way. Besides Fairtrade, these are Rainforest Alliance and UTZ, which recently merged, and Organic.

Each organisation has its own focus. For a while, Fairtrade was the only one with a strong commitment to tackling child labour, although the other organisations have since followed suit.

Limited impact of certification For a long time, buying certified cocoa beans was the only way chocolate manufacturers sought to improve farmers’ lives – and by extension their children’s. But in recent years, it has become clear that certification alone is not enough.

Korotoum Doumbia is a cocoa industry consultant. She used to work for a certified cocoa buyer and saw first-hand what can go wrong.

As long as chocolate companies do not know exactly where their beans come from, it is hard to detect this kind of activity.

“We bought certified cocoa from a certified cooperative, then a few weeks later we received a phone call from another cooperative asking us to pay them the premium. It turned out our supplier had sold us cocoa from an uncertified cooperative, which didn’t meet any of the standards.”

As long as chocolate companies do not know exactly where their beans come from, it is hard to detect this kind of activity. And most chocolate companies do not know because they source their cocoa using a system called ‘mass balance’. This means that if a chocolate company buys, say, half of its cocoa from a certified source, it can put the certification logo on half of its products, even though they might not contain the certified cocoa.

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Initiatives to Combat Child Labour

Auditors are required to carry out regular checks at cooperatives and in villages, but they often announce their visits.

It is also difficult to guarantee that certified cooperatives and their farmers have met the certification standards. Auditors are required to carry out regular checks at cooperatives and in villages, but they often announce their visits. “Sometimes they ask a village or cooperative to gather together 20 farmers for them to talk to,” Doumbia explains.

Certification ultimately translates into very little extra cash for the farmers. Meanwhile, they have to meet the costs of complying with the standards. These include buying organic pesticides and hiring labour. Compliance becomes even more expensive if the cooperative is certified by a number of organisations, each with its own standards. Even then, farmers may not be able to sell all of their cocoa as certified; this ultimately depends on the demand of the cooperative’s buyers.

“I think certification is a starting point,” says Doumbia. “The main advantage is that farmers can access training courses. But at the end of the day, the cooperative is certified and the farmers are still poor, increasing the risk that they will use their children to work on the plantations.”

Industry initiatives Most of the major chocolate companies have committed to sourcing 100% certified or sustainable cocoa by 2020. Some of these companies acknowledge that certification is only part of the solution and that more needs to be done to combat poverty and child labour.

Ehouman leads us from his office to the warehouse and presses a switch. Strip lights buzz to life. One pallet is piled with jute sacks of cocoa beans, but otherwise the space is empty – it will be packed again in a few months when the cocoa harvest comes in. Empty, that is, except for a number of brand-new motorbikes. “These will be used to monitor child labour on our cocoa farms,” Ehouman explains. “We’ve assigned several farmers to drive around the villages in their region. In each village, they’ll fill out a questionnaire on the smartphone we give them. They’ll report any child labour they see and the possible causes, for example no access to a school.”

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Initiatives to Combat Child Labour

The cooperative’s buyer is part of the Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS), which the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) developed with chocolate companies including Nestlé and other partners. ICI is an NGO that was established to promote child protection in cocoa-growing communities following the signing of the Harkin-Engel Protocol in 2001.

The Harkin-Engel Protocol was the first time that the industry openly admitted that child labour existed on West African cocoa farms.

The Protocol was the first time that the industry openly admitted that child labour existed on West African cocoa farms. Its goal was to eliminate child labour within a defined period. That goal was not achieved, however, and in 2010, industry representatives along with the governments of Ghana and the Ivory Coast signed the Declaration of Joint Action to Support Implementation of the Harkin-Engel Protocol, reaffirming their commitment to implementing the Protocol.

The Declaration contains a Framework for Action that sets out a series of steps to achieve a 70% reduction in child labour by 2020.

One of these steps requires chocolate manufacturers to identify where child labour is used and how it can be eliminated.

This is where the men on motorbikes come in. “If they find a case of child labour, we’ll discuss with the ICI and the chocolate manufacturer what we can do about it,” says Ehouman. “This could be providing funds to build a school, so that a child who is rescued from child labour can go to school. Without access to education, there’s a good chance the child will go back to work.”

The CLMRS is one of the many initiatives that cocoa processors and manufacturers have established in recent years. Between them, companies including Mondelēz, Nestlé and Barry Callebaut have committed hundreds of millions of dollars to improving the sustainability of cocoa production. Chocolate companies have also joined forces in initiatives such as CocoaAction, a strategy to coordinate the sustainability efforts of 11 of the world’s largest cocoa and chocolate companies.

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Initiatives to Combat Child Labour

In the past, these kinds of programmes focused solely on increasing farmer productivity, with the idea that higher incomes would reduce child labour. But an increased supply of cocoa ultimately brings down the price, leaving farmers no better off than before.

Most of these programmes are not independently evaluated, making the impact hard to assess.

As a result, companies are adopting an increasingly holistic approach. Programmes now incorporate awareness-raising campaigns, women’s empowerment initiatives and assistance to farmers looking to diversify away from cocoa. What is striking, is that almost no attention is given to paying farmers a higher price.

Most of these programmes are not independently evaluated, making the impact hard to assess, especially because they only apply to a portion of the cocoa purchased. “It’s difficult having so many different initiatives,” says Doumbia. “The activities need better coordination, including between the industry and the government.”

Governments In other words: the industry cannot solve child labour on its own.

Governments must also play their part.

In recent years, the governments of Ghana and the Ivory Coast have drawn up plans, implemented policies and set up commissions to combat child labour in cocoa farming. In 2017, they announced plans to coordinate their production strategies to ensure prices are high enough to keep farmers producing cocoa.

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Farmers can be told not to use their children as labour, but if there is no school in the village for the children to attend, they are likely to be put to work instead.

Not everyone is satisfied, however. NGOs, for example, say the governments need to be more transparent about how they earn and spend taxes. It is all very well helping farmers to broaden their income base by growing an alternative crop, such as cassava, but it makes little sense if there is no road from the village to take the produce to market. Similarly, farmers can be told not to use their children as labour, but if there is no school in the village for the children to attend, they are likely to be put to work instead.

Several governments in consuming countries have launched their own initiatives to combat slavery and child labour. In 2015, the United Kingdom adopted the Modern Slavery Act, while in 2017 the Dutch parliament adopted a bill introducing a duty of care that requires companies to identify and tackle child labour in their supply chains. In September 2017, the bill was still awaiting Senate approval.

What does this all say?

A lot is being done to tackle child labour. But is it enough?

According to Tulane University, the number of child labourers on plantations has increased, from 1.8 million in 2009 to 2.1 million in 2014. At the same time, the goal is 70% fewer child labourers in West Africa by 2020. That’s around 1.4 million children who have to be helped in the next three years.

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“Child labour on cocoa plantations is ultimately a consequence of farmer poverty.

A lot is being done to tackle that poverty, but I think too little attention is paid to fair pricing for cocoa.

The industry is primarily focused on increasing farmer productivity, but that’s not enough. Higher productivity may help some of the farmers in the short term, but in the long term, it brings down the price because it increases supply.

Supermarkets have a responsibility not to keep pushing down prices. And consumers must accept that they have to pay a few cents more for their chocolate. Only then can farmers be paid a fair price.”

Friedel Huetz-Adams (researcher at SÜDWIND e.V. – Institut für Ökonomie und Ökumene) led a study into ways to improve the income of cocoa farmers in West and Central Africa

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TENDER SMILE

Durf teder te zijn Milka (CH) 2011

PARA SMILE DISE

The taste of paradise Bounty (US) 1987

NestlĂŠ Failing on Child Labour Abuse, Says FLA Report BBC News 2012 145

I’D LIKE TO BE ABLE TO GIVE MY CHILDREN EVERYTHING THEY WANT. WHEN YOU ASK ME IF I’M NOT AFRAID THEY’LL BECOME SPOILED, I GET CONFUSED. I DON’T KNOW THAT WORD.

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Kassoum

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I’m 17 and my name is Kassoum.

Sometimes my aunt gave her own children food, but she didn’t give me anything. I sat there while the other children were eating. I was ten.

I was often hungry. I worked from seven in the morning until six at night on my uncle’s plantation. Everything was done by hand; sweat would drip off me.

Sometimes I had to spray pesticides on the trees. I wasn’t given one of those protective masks you put over your mouth. The spray gave me a nasty cough.

I didn’t think it was fair, but I couldn’t say anything. You have to respect your uncle.

Every morning, when I woke up, the first thing I thought about was that I had no one. I was the only child my uncle had brought to his plantation. I never saw my parents.

I couldn’t call them either because I didn’t have a phone.

I felt very alone.

I prayed and thank heaven that my father came and took me back to Burkina Faso when I was 15.

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Kassoum

Looking back, I see that I was exploited. I don’t think you should treat a child like that. A child should go to school, play from time to time, joke around with his friends, relax a bit.

I’d like to be able to give my children everything they want. When you ask me if I’m not afraid they’ll become spoiled, I get confused. I don’t know that word.

What I do know is this: a parent should make sure a child doesn’t feel pain in his heart, like I felt for five years.

That’s how I’ll try to raise my children, and any other children who cross my path.

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Kassoum

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WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO SAY TO THE CHILDREN IN THE NETHERLANDS IS THAT IF THEY ARE BEING TREATED BADLY, THEY CAN COME TO US.

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Sarata

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Sarata

My name is Sarata and I’m 16.

When I think about my time in the Ivory Coast, I get quiet and sad. I worked hard, but my uncle and aunt gave me nothing in return. Nothing.

I was six when I went to live with them. Every morning we got up at six o’clock. We went to the cocoa plantation without breakfast. We were given something to eat at around 12 o’clock, and again in the evening when we came home, but it wasn’t enough. We were always hungry.

When I say ‘we’ and ‘us’, I mean me and the other children who worked there. There were about 12 of us. Most of them came from the nearby villages.

The boys cut the cocoa pods from the trees and threw them on the ground. The girls picked them up and carried them in large baskets on our heads back to the house.

They were very heavy. I often had backache. Some evenings, the girls would rub each other’s neck and shoulders to get rid of the pain.

We did that for a few months each year, because you can’t harvest cocoa all the time. The rest of the year we worked on a palm oil plantation.

In the beginning I went to school, but later I was too tired to go. My aunt and uncle’s children did go to school and didn’t have to work. They weren’t nice to us either. Their attitude was: this is my father’s house and I can do what I want. They weren’t beaten.

We were.

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Sarata

But what I found much worse, was what my aunt said to me. She said I didn’t work hard enough, and that I would never find a man to marry me. She said I would never be happy. Those words hurt me more than when I was beaten.

A part of me was angry at the people who did this to me.

But I ran away when I was ten and my then heart began to heal. Now I’m not angry anymore. I leave it to God to judge them. But I do want to say: please stop treating children like that. It’s unfair.

I’m slowly starting to believe that I can have a better life.

I live in a centre where I’m learning to sew. I’d like to have a family one day: three boys and three girls. If anyone comes and asks if he can take the children away, I’ll say that their father and I don’t want that; that we want to look after them ourselves.

I’d like to say to children in the Netherlands who are being badly treated that they shouldn’t hide. They can always come to us in the centre. We’ll help them.

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Sarata

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I THINK IT’S QUITE NORMAL FOR A CHILD OF 11 TO WORK FOR HIS MONEY.

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Alexis

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My name is Alexis and I’m 15.

One day, my uncle from the Ivory Coast visited us. I asked him to take me with him to his cocoa plantation. My father had died and my mother was too poor to take care of me.

I thought I should earn money. I was 11.

I think it’s quite normal for a child of 11 to work for his money. I can’t really imagine what children of that age do in the Netherlands, but I assume they also work on a farm.

I would have liked to go to school, but my mother couldn’t afford it. I hoped to be able to earn my school fees in the Ivory Coast. I worked on the plantation for three years, six days a week, 11 hours a day. I didn’t get paid.

People came and bought the cocoa. I didn’t know what they did with it. I think it’s unfair that I worked so hard to produce something and never tasted the result.

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Alexis

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But what upsets me most is the fact that I never earned anything at all.

Do you know what it is? As long as you have nothing, no one cares about you. As long as you’re poor, no one pays any attention to you. Look at me: nobody helped me when I was in trouble in the Ivory Coast. Nobody helped me to go to school, even though I really wanted to.

Only when you’re rich, when you’ve become someone, do people want to help you. That’s why I wanted to go to the Ivory Coast. I wanted to earn money and become someone.

But I didn’t make a cent.

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Alexis

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Alexis

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Si deleita, es bueno para la salud y la lujuria, Âżpor quĂŠ comemos tan poco?

El Mundo magazine (ES) 2003

SMOOTH SMILE

Ð ÐÐÐÐÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐÐÐÐ ÐÐ ÐÐÐÐÐÐ!

Alenka (RU) 2009

SMILE REAL

Enjoy the finest and real chocolate-covered peanuts Branch’s milk chocolate peanuts (US) 1955

Tony’s Chocolonely’s Story

What can consumers do to prevent child slavery on cocoa plantations?

This question resulted in the creation of a chocolate brand: Tony’s Chocolonely.

Is its chocolate child labour-free?

On 19 July 2016, a large tank was delivered to Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest cocoa processor, in Belgium. The side of the tank read: ‘This tank is choc-full of traceable cocoa butter. Yeah, we know: pretty cool.’

Why was this so cool? The cocoa butter was made only from beans that Tony’s Chocolonely had bought at partner cooperatives in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Barry Callebaut had adapted its factory and its processes to keep Tony’s Chocolonely products entirely separate, so that only beans bought by Tony’s Chocolonely were used to make the cocoa butter for Tony’s bars. In 2013, it had done the same for Tony’s cocoa mass.

As a result, Tony’s Chocolonely can now be certain that its chocolate is made only with beans supplied by its partner cooperatives – which is more complicated than it sounds.

Founded by a chocolate criminal Tony’s Chocolonely was founded in 2005 as a stunt. After reading about child slavery on cocoa plantations, investigative journalist Teun van de Keuken rang up several chocolate companies for the consumer show Keuringsdienst van Waarde He asked them whether there were child slaves working on the plantations where they sourced their cocoa. After some pointed questioning, one of the world’s largest chocolate companies finally admitted there were, adding that it was “because the people there are so desperately poor”. When Van de Keuken asked why, then, the company didn’t pay farmers more for their cocoa, the line went dead.

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So, child slaves were working on cocoa plantations, even though the eight largest chocolate companies had signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol in 2001, committing to eliminate the worst forms of child labour in the cocoa sector.

Teun van de Keuken argued that by eating chocolate he was complicit in child slavery and turned himself in to the authorities as a chocolate criminal.

Van de Keuken wondered what he, as a consumer, could do. Buy chocolate that was guaranteed slave free? It didn’t exist. Sue the chocolate companies? No, their lawyers would tie him in legal knots. Instead, he argued that by eating chocolate he was complicit in child slavery and turned himself in to the authorities as a chocolate criminal.

The Public Prosecution Service would not charge him, however, even after a two-year legal battle. Its reasoning? Enslaved children may have worked on the cocoa plantations, but Van de Keuken could not prove which ones just by eating a particular bar of chocolate.

Van de Keuken and the other journalists from Keuringsdienst van Waarde decided to take matters into their own hands. To show that it could be done, they set out to produce a chocolate bar that was 100% slave free. They called it Tony’s (from ‘Teun’) Chocolonely (for his lonely struggle in the chocolate industry).

Easier said than done The wrapper on the first bars, which hit the shelves in 2005, declared the chocolate to be ‘100% slave free’. The bars were intended primarily to raise awareness about the issue of child slavery in the chocolate industry. However, as cocoa buyers, Van de Keuken and his colleagues also gained access to the industry that they would never have been given as journalists.

The chocolate took off. The first batch of bars quickly sold out and consumers wanted more. In 2006, Tony’s Chocolonely was officially registered as a chocolate business at the Chamber of Commerce.

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Soon, though, Van de Keuken had to reconsider the ‘100% slavefree’ slogan. The beans in Tony’s Chocolonely’s bars were being sourced from Fairtrade-certified cooperatives in Ghana, but Van de Keuken actually had no idea what that meant.

This became even more apparent when, in 2007, a chocolate importer filed a lawsuit against Tony’s Chocolonely. The importer said that no brand could claim its chocolate was 100% slave free because, in practice, it was impossible to determine which plantation cocoa beans came from and consequently whether they were Fairtrade or not. Furthermore, in Ghana, Fairtrade and non-Fairtrade beans were mixed together as they made their way along the supply chain, meaning there was no guarantee that only Fairtrade beans ended up in a particular chocolate bar, and therefore no guarantee it was slave free.

The judge ruled in Tony’s Chocolonely’s favour, but it was clear that further research into Fairtrade beans was needed. Van de Keuken and his colleagues went to Ghana to investigate. They were stunned by what they found. Handwritten lists were used to check which farmers had supplied which beans; non-Fairtrade farmers were found to be supplying beans to the cooperative, which was selling them on as Fairtrade; farmers who were Fairtrade-certified said they had not received the Fairtrade premium; and even if Fairtrade beans were not mixed with non-Fairtrade beans in Ghana, then they were at Barry Callebaut in Belgium.

In other words, the Fairtrade label gave no guarantee that the beans in Tony’s Chocolonely bars were in fact 100% slave free, and it became obvious that solving child slavery in cocoa production was not going to be simple. The company’s slogan was changed to ‘On our way to 100% slave free chocolate’.

Tony’s becomes a serious brand Ten years on, Tony’s Chocolonely has become a serious brand in the chocolate industry. With more than 16% market share in the Netherlands, it is the country’s second-largest chocolate brand.

Turnover in 2016/2017 was 44 million euros, and the company now sells its bars in seven countries.

Tony’s Chocolonely’s mission is to make all chocolate slave free.

It wants to sell chocolate in a way that combats farmer poverty.

By doing so, it believes that child slavery as well as child labour will be eliminated.

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Tony’s Chocolonely’s Story

Tony’s Chocolonely’s five sourcing principles.

1. Traceable beans. Tony’s Chocolonely knows exactly where its beans come from. That way it can take responsibility for what happens at the beginning of its supply chain. All the beans for its cocoa mass have been traceable since 2013 and all the beans for its cocoa butter since 2016.

2. Higher price. Tony’s Chocolonely pays more than just the certification premium, helping farmers to earn a living income. During the annual general meeting of its partner cooperatives, the farmers decide what the premium will be invested in, for example training courses on increasing productivity, fertiliser or cocoa tree nurseries. Part of the premium is paid directly to the farmers.

3. Long-term commitment.

Tony’s Chocolonely signs contracts with its cooperatives for at least five years, enabling the farmers to invest in the future. It currently works with six cooperatives in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Around 4,500 farmers supply its beans.

4. Better quality and productivity. Tony’s Chocolonely invests in agricultural knowledge and training to increase the farmers’ yields and give them the opportunity to diversify into other crops.

5. Strong farmers. Tony’s Chocolonely helps its cooperatives to professionalise, strengthening the farmers’ negotiating position with buyers and suppliers. Its support includes third-party assistance with writing a business plan, democratic decision-making and management training.

Tony’s definition of slavery: Any form of forced labour or exploitation, including the ‘unconditional’ worst forms of child labour.

Tony’s Chocolonely’s has achieved what the industry thought was impossible: it knows where all the beans in its bars come from, and is the only brand of this reasonable size that can say that about beans from West Africa.

This is important because Tony’s Chocolonely believes that eliminating child slavery and child labour requires working directly with farmers and paying them a higher price. The company wants to help farmers earn a living income, so that their children no longer need to work illegally. Of course, this means knowing who to work with and, therefore, where the cocoa comes from.

Over the years, Tony’s Chocolonely has, next to traceability, incorporated four additional sourcing into its business model. It pays an extra premium on top of the Fairtrade premium and works with farmers to increase their yields. The long-term contracts it signs with cooperatives give farmers more security, allowing them to plan for and invest in the future. Furthermore, it helps the cooperatives to professionalise their operations.

‘Together we make chocolate 100% slave free’ Mission In the meantime, the slogan on Tony’s wrappers has changed again, to ‘Together we make chocolate 100% slave free.’

Tony’s Chocolonely’s mission is to make all chocolate slave free - not just its own but all chocolate worldwide. In order to eliminate child slavery and ultimately child labour, farmers need to escape the poverty cycle. To achieve this, everybody has to take responsibility. By leading by example, the company hopes to inspire others – chocolate makers, politicians, consumers – to act.

As its website states, the company ‘shows that chocolate can be made differently, without slavery and exploitation’

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Ten years of Tony’s

Has Tony’s Chocolonely completely eliminated child labour on the plantations where it sources its beans? An interview with Paul Schoenmakers, head of Tony’s Chocolonely’s Impact Team.

Is child labour used on the plantations where you source your beans?

Yes. Tony’s Chocolonely was established to eliminate slave labour in the industry and ultimately all child labour too. That’s why we buy our cocoa from the region where the problem is the biggest and most complicated. Around 2.2 million children work on cocoa plantations in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. You’re not going to create a child-labour-free oasis overnight. Change takes time.

How much child labour is there in your supply chain?

We don’t know exactly how many children are involved. If child labour is reported, we intervene immediately and look for a solution together with the cocoa farmer and the community.

That’s happened 17 times in the past two years, but we believe the problem is more widespread.

Don’t you monitor child labour in your supply chain?

At present, not systematically. We have set up a data-collection system at two of our partner cooperatives, but it has turned out not to be entirely effective and is hard to scale up.

In collaboration with the International Cocoa Initiative, we are now implementing the Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS). We receive monthly reports, which will help us monitor child labour, what’s causing it and how it can be solved.

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What others say about Tony’s Chocolonely “I’m very happy to work with the Kapatchiva Cooperative and Tony’s. Thanks to them, we have all kinds of projects that can make our lives easier.

The most important project for me is the cassava field. That’s a field where the women from the village can grow cassava.

We sell the cassava, and with the money we can help our husbands to pay our children’s school fees.”

Adjoua Kouadio (age unknown, village resident, Ivory Coast)

Our focus, incidentally, is on the ‘remediation’ part of the system.

If we discover child labour, we discuss with the cooperative and the farmers how we can solve it. We believe in cooperation, not just control. Child labour is part of the social context in West Africa and eliminating it has to be something that the whole community supports. But we draw the line at slavery and will immediately stop working with any farm where slavery is found.

Several other chocolate manufacturers use the CLMRS as well. What makes you different when it comes to detecting and solving child labour?

Tony’s Chocolonely tries to pay farmers a fair price by paying a flexible premium above the market price.

“I do question how Tony’s Chocolonely calculates that fair price, though. They assume a cocoa yield of 800 kilos per hectare, whereas the average yield in West Africa is roughly 450-500 kilos per hectare. How will farmers achieve the higher yield? I’d also like to know what they are going to do now that cocoa prices have fallen sharply; whether they can continue to pay that extra premium.

However, Tony’s Chocolonely is proof that you can be successful by selling more expensive chocolate in an effort to share revenues more fairly. There are clearly consumers who are willing to pay more for their chocolate if they think it will improve the lives of farmers and children.

Can Tony’s Chocolonely rid the cocoa industry of child labour on its own? No. Everyone has to do their bit – other chocolate companies, governments, supermarkets. Everyone has to take responsibility. I see Tony’s Chocolonely as a trendsetter.”

Friedel Huetz-Adams, (researcher at SÜDWIND e.V.)

The other manufacturers only monitor the part of their supply chain covered by the system. They have selected a number of cocoagrowing communities for monitoring but also buy cocoa from other, unmonitored sources. They don’t know what goes on in that part of their supply chain. We are the only company to have implemented the CLMRS for all the farmers in our supply chain.

We also regularly visit our partner cooperatives and farmers. We used to do that a couple of times a year. Now, one of our employees spends two thirds of the year in Ghana. Another employee spends most of the year in the Ivory Coast. This regular presence means we are better able to work with the farmers to find solutions.

You pay an additional premium to farmers. How much is it?

Last year, the Fairtrade premium was 200 dollars per tonne.

The premium we paid on top of that was 175 dollars per tonne.

That means farmers got 375 dollars on top of the farm-gate price, or ca 20% more. How many farmers earn a living income as a result?

We don’t measure that. The extra premium is what an average farmer needs. Whether a particular farmer can earn a living income with our premium depends on how many hectares of land he has, how efficient he is, how many children he has to support and whether he has any other sources of income.

Your website states that you ‘show how chocolate can be made differently, without slavery and exploitation’. Can you really make that claim if you don’t measure whether child labour or slavery have decreased in your supply chain and you don’t know how many farmers now earn a living income?

I’m convinced that our five sourcing principles combine the latest and best insights with common sense, which together address the main cause of slavery and child labour, namely poverty. It’s logical that if you tackle poverty, you’ll also tackle child slavery and child labour.

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Of course, we didn’t come up with these principles on our own.

We incorporated the input from NGOs, our partner cooperatives and others. What makes us unique is that we combine all these principles: we’re doing things differently and we’ve shown that that can be commercially successful. That’s what’s on our website.

Do we have irrefutable evidence that we’ve eliminated slavery?

No. Our model is still under development. Don’t forget, a few years ago, we were so small that we only worked with two cooperatives.

We now work with six. We’ve grown by 50% year on year.

Did you choose rapid growth over putting your supply chain in order?

The two go hand in hand. Rapid growth is part of our mission.

The more chocolate we sell, the more farmers we can reach.

And the bigger we are, the more pressure we can put on others to take action.

And we’re learning as we go along. We make choices based on common sense. We don’t want to wait to validate them first, because the problem needs to be tackled right now.

I still find your statement – that you ‘show that chocolate can be made differently, without slavery and exploitation’ – a bold one. As the head of the Impact Team, do you ever argue with the Marketing department about how your message is worded?

I’d call them healthy discussions rather than arguing.

We’re talking about a complex problem after all. In the Impact Team, we use language like‘things are nuanced’, ‘we’re measuring that’, and ‘you need to understand the context’. Then Marketing reminds us that they have three seconds to grab a consumer’s attention, and what they need is an answer that can fit into a six-word headline or a 140-character tweet.

Ultimately, though, everyone who works at the company, whether it’s in marketing, sales or operations, is guided by our mission.

And that mission is to make all chocolate 100% slave free.

Do you want other companies to adopt Tony’s model?

Yes. We’ve shown that our model can be commercially successful.

Others can adopt our way of working, but if they can figure out a better way, we’re open to that, too.

Don’t major players like Mondelēz and Nestlé already have programmes in place to tackle poverty and child labour?

Tony’s Chocolonely is certainly not the only company trying to make a difference, but we think progress is too slow. Those programmes often only reach a small percentage of farmers.

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“Thanks to Tony’s Chocolonely and our cooperative, we’ve repaired the water pump in our village. We’re very happy because now we have drinking water again. Before the pump was repaired we had to get water from a well, and that water wasn’t good. Sometimes there were dead rats in it.

We’ve also been able to buy a tricycle with a trailer. We bought it to transport cocoa, but it’s useful for a lot of other things.

A few months ago, we used it to take someone to hospital.

And we were given seeds for a new type of cocoa tree, which is more drought-resistant. We’ll be able to harvest the beans in a few years. We’re very happy with the support we get from Tony’s Chocolonely and our cooperative.”

Kouassi Sylvain Yoboué (cocoa farmer, Ivory Coast)

In addition, many programmes just focus on increasing productivity, which is only part of the solution. We also believe in enabling farmers to earn a living income, by paying them a higher price for their cocoa as well. I don’t know of any other programme that does that.

Supermarkets earn the biggest margins in the value chain.

Aren’t they ultimately the ones who should ensure farmers are paid a living income?

Retailers need to stop cutting prices and should critically assess their chocolate range, including their own-brand products.

However, a recent study showed that it’s unclear who ultimately determines the price farmers receive; there’s no single party to blame.

“I think it’s great what Tony’s Chocolonely is doing. However, I’m interested to see whether they can continue to make an impact as they grow. Tony’s Chocolonely works closely with six cooperatives and around 4,500 farmers. I think it will be a challenge for them to continue doing that if they expand to a few hundred cooperatives and many more farmers.”

Korotoum Doumbia (cocoa industry consultant)

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Everyone in the chain has to take responsibility. That’s why we want to encourage more chocolate companies to improve conditions for farmers in West Africa. And it’s why we want consumers – and supermarkets – to realise that chocolate shouldn’t be a cheap product. We want governments in cocoa-producing countries to introduce laws for companies: don’t sell products unless you know they have not used child labour. And we want farmers never to allow child labour, slavery or exploitation and to send children to school.

Because really, this is a problem we can only solve together.

Tony’s Chocolonely’s Story

GOOD SMILE NESS 美味しさには勝てない Carré chocolat (JP) 2008

CRAZY SMILE

Crazy about chocolate, serious about people Tony’s Chocolonely (NL) 2012

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VOA News Africa 54 (USA) 2016

DON’T JUST GO WITH SOMEONE TO ANOTHER COUNTRY. THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO WILL EXPLOIT YOU.

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Josias

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My name is Josias. I’m 19 years old.

I started working on my uncle’s cocoa plantation when I was ten. He didn’t treat me badly, but the work was very hard. When I was 14, I wanted to go home.

I remember telling my uncle that I wanted to go back to Burkina Faso. He said, “No, you’re staying here.” He didn’t want to give me any money for the bus. That’s when I ran away. I went to work on the neighbour’s plantation to save money for my journey home.

I don’t know if that changed my uncle’s mind, but he let me go soon after. He paid me 15,000 CFA (23 euros). I don’t think that’s a fair amount. I mean, I worked for him for four years. What I earned was just enough to buy a bus ticket back home.

And money was the reason I went to the Ivory Coast.

I even asked my uncle to take me with him. I couldn’t finish primary school because we couldn’t afford it. There was no work in Burkina Faso. I wanted to earn money.

I failed.

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Josias

Kinderschokolade Greenpeace magazine (DE) 2009

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I won’t go back to the Ivory Coast in a hurry. I have bad memories of it. And if I did go, it would only be with someone I trusted completely, someone I knew would treat me well. Because the last time, I was exploited.

To my brothers and sisters here, I would like to say: please be careful, don’t just go with someone to another country.

There are people who will exploit you.

It’s really important to take school and work seriously – this is true for children all over the world – because it will help you earn money. If you have money, you can stop other people from taking advantage of you, like my uncle took advantage of me.

Still, I won’t be angry with him if I see him again. He is my uncle and I will treat him with respect. But if I see that he is still treating children on his plantation in the same way, I’ll tell him to stop.

You should care for other people’s children as if they were your own. You’ll make God happy and ultimately yourself.

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Josias

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Josias

TONY – Van chocoladecrimineel tot wereldverbeteraar Amstelfilm (NL) 2015

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Laeticia Douamba, 16

Augustin Kambou, 17

Edyon Kambiré, 18

Yérie Valerie Kambou, 18

Ghislain Nikiéma, 17

Sansan Arnaud Cedric Dibloni, 15

Bèbè Oussé, 15

Issaka Kabré, 17

Cathérine Kambou, 16

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The Children in This Book

Bassirou TraorĂŠ, 15

Abdoul Wakirou Mohamed Ilboudo, 16

Kassoum Kambou, 17

Sarata Zongo, 16

Alexis Pooda, 15

Sami Josias Kambou, 19

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The Children in This Book

The Children in This Book

All the children – teenagers, actually – portrayed in this book come from Burkina Faso.

They now live in a shelter for children who have worked on cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast or are in need of help for some other reason. In the centre, they learn a trade: sewing, mechanics or carpentry.

Most of the children said they were taken by aunts and uncles to work on the plantations of aunts and uncles. In some cases, this might have been the sibling of one of the child’s parents. However, in many West African countries, the term aunt or uncle can also refer to a (distant) family acquaintance or someone from the same village or region.

Many cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast are originally Burkinabé.

All the children interviewed said they had been exploited; they received little or no money for the work they did. In some cases, like Mohamed’s, a family member was paid instead.

The number of trafficked children working on cocoa plantations in Ghana and the Ivory Coast is unknown. The Global Slavery Index suggests that tens of thousands of children might be involved.

Yet, modern child slavery, including child trafficking, has been relatively understudied. This is partly due to the fact that the problem is ‘small’ compared with other forms of child labour.

It is impossible to say how representative, statistically, the stories of the children in this book are.

However, the testimonies of other trafficked children tell a similar story: appalling working conditions for little or no pay. The children are cowed into obedience with threats and false promises for years, until they are old enough to rebel and return home. They speak to their parents rarely, if at all, during this time. Some of the children are younger than ten when they arrive on the plantation.

The kind of activities that the children in this book described, such as spraying pesticides without protective masks and clearing shrubs and weeds with machetes, have been studied by Tulane University, an authority on child labour in West Africa. They were found to be widespread, involving more than 2 million children.

The tasks described by the children in this book will therefore be familiar to many of the other 2 million.

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The Children in This Book

The idea that he is sweating on those plantations again upsets me.

I ask myself a lot of questions.

Kpedjounena Ousse 58, Bèbè’s aunt, Burkina Faso “Bèbè has gone back to the Ivory Coast, where he works on a cocoa plantation. I don’t feel good about it, but he had to go.

Bèbè is an orphan. When his father died, his mother took him to Burkina Faso where she remarried. They didn’t want to take him in so he came to live with me. I cared for him like a mother.

But we needed money. I couldn’t pay his school fees. There was nothing else for him to do but go back to the cocoa plantations.

That’s the way he saw it.

The idea that he is sweating on those plantations again upsets me. I ask myself a lot of questions: Is he eating? Is he alright? Is he living in good conditions?

Bèbè doesn’t have a phone, but the brother of the man who took him lives here in the village. The cocoa farmer Bèbè works for sent someone to the village to fetch him. That’s usually what happens.

Through that brother, I can send and receive messages. That’s how I know Bèbè arrived safely.

A lot of young people from our village go to the Ivory Coast to work on cocoa plantations. Nothing grows here. Everything you see – motorbikes, houses, everything – was bought with money from the Ivory Coast.

Bèbè wants to be a tailor. I’m not against that, but I’d like him to finish school. I hope he earns enough money in the Ivory Coast to go to school again.”

195

The Children in This Book

Sibiri Gansonre Age unknown, official at the Directorate Combatting Violence Against Children at the Ministry of Social Affairs, Burkina Faso “I spent some time in the Ivory Coast and saw how the trafficked children on the cocoa plantations lived. It left a deep impression on me.

The children slept in huts made out of wood and banko, a sort of clay, in the middle of the jungle. There was nothing else there. The plantation owner lived in the village nearby.

I spent some time in the Ivory Coast and saw how the trafficked children on the cocoa plantations lived.

It left a deep impression on me.

Some children had made a sort of mattress with things they’d found in the field, but most of them slept on the ground. They ate what they could find in the forest: cassava, plantains, maybe some mangoes. Sometimes the owner gave them something to eat – a fish, some salt – which had to last them a week or two.

They only had the clothes they were wearing. Have you ever seen someone here on the street who has gone crazy? With dirty hair and dressed in rags? Those were the kind of clothes the children had on.

The children worked all day. Some of them had only come for the harvest season, others were there all year. There were children who had worked on the plantation continuously for two or three years Many of the children who work in those conditions are from Burkina Faso. When they go home to their parents, they don’t talk about their time in the Ivory Coast. I think they want to forget what they went through. But they also don’t want to blame the people who took them there. These are often family members, and it’s not common here to blame your family.”

196

The Children in This Book

Mathieu Dibloni 42, farmer, Cedric’s father, Burkina Faso “My brother has a cocoa plantation in the Ivory Coast. He asked if Cedric could come and help him. I was struggling financially at the time. Cedric couldn’t go to school. And when your brother asks you something like that… that’s a family matter.

Cedric didn’t work on the farm, I’m sure of that. He was still a child when he left; he was ten. My brother wanted Cedric to help him around the house – to fetch water, look after the children, that sort of thing.

My wife took him to the bus. There’s a man in this village who checks the tickets on the bus. He often travels between Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast. He took Cedric with him.

My wife was happy to see Cedric go somewhere where he would have a better life, but also sad because she would miss him. That’s more of a maternal thing. I thought about Cedric, of course – he’s my child – but I didn’t really miss him because I assumed my brother was taking good care of him.

Cedric stayed in the Ivory Coast for four years. I had no contact with him. He didn’t have a mobile phone. But sometimes people came from the Ivory Coast and brought news. ‘So and so is doing well,’ they’d say.

Eventually, I asked my brother to send Cedric home. He paid for Cedric’s bus ticket. The strange thing is that my brother doesn’t answer his phone anymore. I don’t know if that has anything to do with the fact that I brought Cedric back.

Cedric is the only one who went to the Ivory Coast. I now earn enough to send my children to school.

I have four children. Cedric is the only one who went to the Ivory Coast. I now earn enough to send my children to school.

I don’t have a lot, though. Not much grows in Burkina Faso because it’s so dry. The rainy season has never been long, and in recent years it’s become even shorter. But that’s the reality for us humans.

We have to make do with what nature gives us.”

197

The Children in This Book

198

199

Timeline This overview provides insight into meaningful events and facts around the production of cocoa and chocolate. It does not pretend to be complete.

1500#–#300 BC The origin of the cacao tree is still debated, but evidence suggests it comes from the tropical rainforests of the Amazon and Orinoco basins.

The Olmec Indians are thought to be the first people to cultivate cacao, or cocoa, as it is more commonly known, which they use for certain religious rituals and medicinal purposes.

250#–#900 AD The Maya bring the cocoa tree out of the rainforest and establish plantations throughout their kingdom.

Roasted cocoa beans are ground and mixed with water to create a drink.

1000#–#1200 Cocoa beans become a valuable commodity and are used both as a unit of calculation and a currency.

1200#–#1500 The Aztecs are introduced to cocoa through trade with the Maya. Due to the high value of cocoa beans, the drink is reserved for the elite.

1502 Christopher Columbus is the first European to see cocoa being used as a drink and a currency during his fourth visit to the ‘New World’. However, the few beans he brings back to the Spanish court are overlooked in favour of more exotic souvenirs.

1615 Anne d’Autriche, a Spanish princess, marries King Louis XIII of France. She is said to have given him chocolate as an engagement gift, introducing the drink to the French court.

1615#–#1700 Chocolate begins to spread across Europe, probably helped by its reputed aphrodisiac properties. The British, French and Dutch set up their own cocoa plantations in the West Indies and South America. As with other colonial plantations, most of the work is carried out by slaves from West Africa.

1753 Cocoa is given its official botanical name of Theobroma cacao, from the Greek words meaning ‘food of the gods’, by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus.

1778 M. Doret, a Frenchman, invents the first hydraulic machine for grinding cocoa beans, reducing the cost of processing cocoa and facilitating the mass production of chocolate.

1815 Dutchman Casparus van Houten sets up a primitive cocoa mill in his house in Amsterdam. As manpower is the only utility available, the mill is kept turning by labourers running around in circles.

1822 The Portuguese plant the first cocoa trees on the island of São Tomé (off the coast of French Gabon), introducing the fruit to Africa. However, large-scale cocoa production in West Africa does not start until the end of the 19th century.

1528 Conquistador Hernán Cortés is the first to recognise cocoa beans’ commercial value. He returns to Spain with the beans and the equipment necessary to prepare them.

1824 John Cadbury opens a shop in Birmingham, England. Using a pestle and mortar to grind his own beans, he experiments with a range of cocoa and chocolate products, laying the groundwork for the Cadbury empire.

1585 The first commercially grown shipment of cocoa beans arrives in Spain, launching the trade in cocoa.

To meet the demand, Spain sets up plantations in its overseas colonies.

When mistreatment and European diseases threaten to wipe out the native workers, slaves from West Africa are brought in.

1828 Casparus van Houten’s son, Coenraad, invents a cocoa press that extracts cocoa butter from roasted cocoa beans. The resulting defatted cocoa powder is treated with alkaline salts, a process that becomes known as ‘dutching’ and makes it easier to mix the powder with water and other ingredients.

200

Timeline

1847 The British firm J. S. Fry & Sons mixes some of the cocoa butter extracted by the dutching process back into the cocoa powder and adds sugar and chocolate liquor to produce ‘eating chocolate’. After thousands of years as a liquid, cocoa is now consumed as a solid.

1868 Cocoa trees are first reported in Ghana, growing in the grounds of the Basel Mission in the Eastern Province. This is later disputed by local accounts, which state that in 1876 the Ghanaian Tetteh Quarshie smuggled unfermented beans in his clothing from Fernando Po (now Bioko, an island off Gabon) and planted them on his family’s farm.

1879 In one of the most significant advances in chocolate making, Rodolphe Lindt of Switzerland invents the ‘conching’ machine. A rolling device with a heated stone trough resembling a conch shell, the machine eliminates inconsistencies in processed chocolate, producing a smooth fondant and lowering the melting point. His ‘melting chocolate’ is a huge success.

1880 Cocoa cultivation in West Africa begins in earnest. The first largescale production is from Portuguese plantations on the islands of São Tomé and Principe. These plantations become notorious for using workers who are slaves in all but name, despite slavery having been officially abolished. Between 1888 and 1908, more than 67,000 people from the African mainland are shipped to the islands, mostly from Angola.

1883 The American Baker Chocolate Company adopts ‘The Chocolate Girl’

by Swiss artist Jean-Étienne Liotard as its logo. The painting also serves as inspiration for the illustration of the nurse used by the Dutch brand Droste on its cocoa tins.

1885 The first export of cocoa from Ghana takes place, and by 1911 Ghana is the largest cocoa producer in the world, dominated by smallholder farmers.

It retains this position until the late 1970s, when it is overtaken by the Ivory Coast.

1890s Falling palm oil and rubber prices encourage the French colonial authorities to begin cocoa cultivation in the Ivory Coast’s abundant forest regions. Over the following decades, the depreciation of the franc increases the profitability of export crops, including cocoa, and production increases.

1893 Sweet maker Milton Hershey sees chocolate-making equipment at the World’s Fair in Chicago. He buys the equipment and sends it back to his caramel factory in Pennsylvania, where he begins producing his own chocolate.

1899 Rodolphe Lindt sells his recipes and conching technology to David Sprüngli, marking the beginning of the Swiss chocolate giant Lindt & Sprüngli and Switzerland’s chocolate dominance.

1905 Concerned about reports of slavery, William Cadbury sends Dr Joseph Burtt to investigate conditions in São Tomé and Principe. Burtt reports that Angolans are taken to the islands by the Portuguese “against their will, and often under conditions of great cruelty”. Cadbury boycotts the cocoa from the islands, sourcing it instead from Britain’s Gold Coast colony.

1911 Frank and Ethel Mars establish the Mars Company in Washington State, on the west coast of America. On the east coast, Milton Hershey’s sales exceed $5 million.

1925 The New York Cocoa Exchange is established in the World Trade Centre.

The London Cocoa Terminal Market, on which cocoa options and futures are traded, is established three years later.

1926 The Slavery Convention is signed by member states of the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations. It obliges signatories to eliminate slavery, the slave trade and forced labour in their territories, although Article 9 allows each signatory to exempt certain of its territories from all or parts of the Convention.

201

Timeline

1930s New and cheaper supplies of raw materials and more efficient production processes make chocolate affordable to the wider population.

Nowadays, consumption averages around eight kilos per person per year in many European countries.

1930s Many Ivorians join the cash economy and a class of smallholders – cocoa farmers cultivating 2-4 hectares – develops. The French authorities encourage migration of the Mossi people from Burkina Faso to work on their plantations. They swelled the labour force for cocoa cultivation on both French plantations and smallholder farms.

1937 Ghanaian farmers refuse to sell cocoa at the low prices set by European merchants. The Nowell Commission created by the British colonial government to investigate the issue advises the government to establish a marketing board. In 1940, the West African Produce Control Board is set up to purchase cocoa at guaranteed prices from all West African countries.

1943 Hershey Foods Corporation develops the heat-resistant, high-energy Tropical Chocolate Bar for the US military. By the end of World War II, the company has produced more than three billion of the bars.

1948 The United Nations General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It includes an article stating: ‘No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.’ It also recognises a ‘just and favourable remuneration’ as a basic right.

1971 Apollo 15 astronauts take Hershey’s ‘space brownies’ to the moon.

The brownies, which have been compressed into cubes and wrapped in edible plastic, are eaten in one bite to avoid crumbs escaping into the space capsule.

1973 Cadbury opens the Chocolate World theme park in Bournville, UK. The same year, Hershey opens Hershey’s Chocolate World in Pennsylvania, US.

1977 At 300,000 tonnes per year, the Ivory Coast overtakes Ghana as the world’s largest producer of cocoa.

Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the Ivory Coast’s first president and a former cocoa planter, develops the crop into a multi-billion-dollar industry through a mixture of subsidies and land incentives. He maintained an open immigration policy which enabled people from Burkina Faso to start cocoa farming in the Ivory Coast.

He also establishes the Caisse de Stabilisation (CAISTAB), a national marketing board responsible for maintaining farm-gate prices.

1980s World cocoa prices sink to historic lows, bankrupting CAISTAB and making the Ivory Coast susceptible to World Bank structural adjustment programmes. These require, among other things, the privatisation of cocoa boards in exchange for debt forgiveness. The country begins a steady economic decline.

1988 Nestlé buys British chocolate manufacturer Rowntree and becomes the world’s largest chocolate maker.

The industry becomes increasingly consolidated in the following decades, putting increasing power in the hands of cocoa processors and chocolate manufacturers.

1989 The United Nations General Assembly adopts the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 32 requires signatories to recognise, among other things, the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education.

1990s World Bank and International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programmes in West Africa require the privatisation of cocoa boards in exchange for debt forgiveness.

Governments had previously regulated the market, guaranteeing farmers a minimum price for their cocoa. Following the new policy implementation, market prices fall. In an effort to keep costs low, farmers seek the cheapest forms of labour.

1993 Henri Konan Bédié succeeds Houphouët-Boigny as Ivorian president and introduces the concept of Ivoirité.

This is used to differentiate between ‘true’ Ivorians and foreigners, who make up a significant portion of the population. The concept serves to inflame ethnic tensions and ultimately leads to civil war in 2002 and 2011.

Many immigrant farmers from i.e.

Burkina Faso are evicted from their land.

2000 Ghana ratifies the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention No. 182. The convention calls for the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including all types of slavery and any work that could damage the health, safety and well-being of children.

2000 Nearly a century after Cadbury’s boycott of West African cocoa, media reports resurface about cocoa industry practices in the region. A BBC documentary claims that children are being trafficked and employed in large numbers in hazardous work and slave-like conditions. The documentary sparks public outrage and provides the impetus for the Harkin-Engel Protocol the following year.

2001 Representatives from eight major chocolate manufacturers sign the Harkin-Engel Protocol, a voluntary agreement that sets out a six-step, time-bound action plan to eliminate the worst forms of child labour (as defined by ILO Convention No. 182) in the cocoa sector.

2001 The Ghana Child Labour Survey, the first nationwide survey designed to collect information on the various aspects of working children, is conducted. The results indicate that 1.3 million children under the age of 13 are involved in child labour, 242,074 of them in hazardous activities.

2002 Following the signing of the HarkinEngel Protocol, the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) is founded to promote child protection in cocoagrowing communities. The ICI begins operating in Ghana and the Ivory Coast in 2007. A pilot of the Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS) with Nestlé is launched in 2012.

202

Timeline

2002 Although accurate figures are difficult to obtain, a 2002 study by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture estimates that around 625,000 children are involved in at least one aspect of cocoa production in the Ivory Coast. Of these, 12,000 have no local family connection.

2003 The Ivory Coast ratifies ILO Convention No. 182 and ILO Convention No. 138 on the minimum age for admission to employment and work. The convention sets the basic minimum age at 15, or 14 as a ‘possible exception’ for developing countries. In 2015, the government passes a revised Labour Code raising the minimum working age to 16.

2003 The United Nation’s Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children comes into force. Ghana and the Ivory Coast both ratify the Protocol in 2012.

2003 The Ivory Coast and the International Labour Organisation announce the West African Project Against Abusive Child Labour in Commercial Agriculture (WACAP). The initiative aims to address abusive child labour by increasing farmer awareness, improving schools and providing better social services to families.

A year later, SOSTECI, a child labour monitoring system, is established.

2003 Three Dutch journalists, including Teun (Tony) van de Keuken begin a year-long probe into the chocolate sector for the consumer programme Keuringsdienst van Waarde. They find that big chocolate companies are buying cocoa from cocoafarms where childslaves may be used. To prove that it can be done, they set out to produce a chocolate bar that is 100% slave free. Tony’s Chocolonely is born.

2005 The first Tony’s Chocolonely milk chocolate bars hit the supermarket shelves. Since then, Tony’s Chocolonely’s mission is to make chocolate 100% slave free. Not only their own chocolate, but all chocolate, worldwide

2006 Ghana introduces the National Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour in Cocoa (NPECLC) to coordinate the national response to child labour in the industry. Due to a lack of formal structural authority and a number of concerns about the management of programme funds, the NPECLC eventually loses senior government support. A second National Plan of Action is launched in 2017 to address these shortcomings.

2009 Supported by Ivorian law enforcement officers, INTERPOL’s first police operation targeting child trafficking in West Africa results in the rescue of 54 children and the arrest of eight people. The children, aged between 11 and 16, had been found working under extreme conditions on plantations near the Ghanaian border.

2010 The governments of Ghana and the Ivory Coast, the US Department of Labour and chocolate and cocoa industry representatives sign the Declaration of Joint Action to Support Implementation of the Harkin-Engel Protocol. Unlike the Protocol, which calls for the elimination of the worst forms of child labour, the Declaration aims to achieve a 70% reduction by 2020.

2011 In its final report on the Harkin-Engel Protocol, Tulane University, which has been commissioned to monitor progress, reports that none of the six action points have been fully implemented and the required industry-wide reforms in the cocoa sector have not taken place. The report also concludes that trafficking of migrant children still occurs.

2011 Following a series of corruption scandals in the Ivorian cocoa sector, the Conseil du Café-Cacao (CCC) is set up to regulate the industry, including setting the buying price of cocoa. It is modelled on the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD).

2011 Ghana ratifies ILO Convention No. 138 on the minimum age for admission to employment and work.

This sets the minimum age at 15.

2011 The United Nations Human Rights Council endorses the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, a global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse impacts on human rights linked to business activity.

It is the first corporate human rights responsibility initiative to be endorsed by the UN. 2012 The first World Cocoa Conference is held in Abidjan, the Ivory Coast.

Participants adopt the Global Cocoa Agenda, which outlines the changes needed to improve the sector including compliance with international labour standards.

2012 A decade after the signing of the Harkin-Engel Protocol, the CNN Freedom Project investigates whether the industry’s promises have been kept. After visiting cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast, journalists report that trafficked children are ‘a horrible normal’.

2014 The World Cocoa Foundation launches CocoaAction, a collaborative approach by 11 of the world’s largest cocoa and chocolate companies to train around 300,000 cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast and Ghana by 2020, increasing productivity and improving the situation of women and children. Critics say the number of farmers the plan aims to reach is not commensurate with the market power of its members.

2015 Tulane University conducts a study of the West African chocolate industry as part of the commitments under the 2010 Declaration of Joint Action. The study estimates that 2.12 million child labourers worked in cocoa production in the 2013/2014 season in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, an increase of 20% compared to 2008/2009, the previous period surveyed.

2015 Following the publication of the Tulane University study, three California consumers file class-action lawsuits against Hershey, Mars and Nestlé, claiming they would not have bought the companies’ chocolate products if they had known they might be tainted by child labour.

203

Timeline

2015 ICCO calculates that the inflationadjusted average price for a metric tonne of cocoa has decreased significantly over the last few decades, from $5,585 in the 1980/81 season to $3,057 in 2014/15, with the lowest level in 1999/2000 at $1,274. Since the decline, many farmers are not able to earn a living income from cocoa.

2015 Based on data from 2013, UNCTAD concludes that three major agribusiness companies (Archer Daniels Midland, Barry Callebaut and Olam) control more than 60% of the world’s cocoa grinding. Olam’s acquisition of Archer Daniels Midland in 2014 concentrates the market even further.

2015 Three major certifying organisations (UTZ, Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance) introduce or announce plans to introduce living wage indicators in their revised standards. However, the Cocoa Barometer Consortium estimates that yield, farm size and farm-gate price will all have to increase if farmers are to escape poverty.

Because most farmers are selfemployed, living wage is less relevant; it’s living income that matters.

2016 The True Price network notes the considerable gap between costs and price in cocoa production. In the Ivory Coast, it estimates that the cost of producing cocoa, including all the social and environmental externalities, is around $8.35 per kilo. This is nearly six times the current farm-gate price just below $1,400 (September 2107).

2016 The Bávaro Cocoa Declaration of the third World Cocoa Conference in the Dominican Republic notes that the Global Cocoa Agenda adopted in 2012 ‘provided a roadmap towards sustainability and world cocoa economy’, but the agenda is far from being implemented.

2016 Following presidential elections in 2015, the Ivory Coast introduces a new constitution that prohibits human trafficking. It also passes an anti-trafficking law – the first to penalise the trafficking of both adults and children – and adopts a 20162020 anti-trafficking action plan.

2017 The International Cocoa Organisation projects an 18% rise in global cocoa bean production to 4.692 million tonnes in the 2016/2017 season. The Ivory Coast is expected to produce 1.980 million tonnes of this and Ghana 950,000 tonnes. If realised, this increase will raise world production to a record level. Meanwhile, cocoa prices continue to fall.

2017 The Ivory Coast and Ghana announce plans to coordinate their production strategies in order to tackle price volatility and ensure prices are high enough for farmers to keep producing cocoa. A 30% drop in world prices in the previous six months had forced the Ivory Coast to lower the price it guarantees farmers.

2017 A World Bank report claims that corruption and mismanagement by Ghana’s cocoa regulator are harming production and farmers. ‘[COCOBOD] has been unable to achieve one of its most important goals – to stabilise farmgate prices at levels that permit farmers to earn an adequate return on their land, labour and capital,’ the report says.

2017 Human rights activists lose a decade-long campaign to find three chocolate manufacturers liable for facilitating the use of forced child labour in Africa. The activists accuse Nestlé, Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland of condoning illegal labour practices and abetting it by making ‘specific and false assertions’ to US consumers, ‘which allowed each of them to continue aiding and abetting child slavery with no measurable loss of US market share’.

2020 The Ivory Coast sets a target of processing 50% of its annual cocoa harvest nationally by 2020, up from 30% now, in an effort to add value to the domestic economy.

2020 Most of the major chocolate manufacturers, with the exception of Mondelēz and Nestlé, commit to sourcing 100% certified cocoa by 2020. Certified cocoa is verified against established standards for labour, environment and sustainable farming practices. In addition, CocoaAction, a collaborative approach by 11 of the world’s largest chocolate companies, commits to training 300,000 cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast and Ghana by 2020, with the aim of increasing productivity and improving the situation of women and children.

204

205

206

207

Index

Index of Commercial Pay-offs 25

JOY Godiva… Sparks joy and deepens connections Godiva, Yildiz Holding (TR) 2014-2015 www.godiva.com www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=FOWvNNeFuM

26

TRUE

Щ ЩЩЩЩ, Щ ЩЩЩЩЩЩЩЩ ЩЩЩЩЩЩЩ Щ ЩЩЩЩЩЩЩЩЩЩЩ ЩЩЩЩ ЩЩЩЩЩ. ЩЩ ЩЩЩЩ, Щ ЩЩЩЩЩЩЩЩ ЩЩЩЩЩЩЩЩ ЩЩЩЩЩЩЩ ЩЩЩЩЩ ЩЩЩЩЩ. ЩЩЩЩЩ. ЩЩЩЩЩЩЩЩ ЩЩЩЩЩЩ ЩЩЩЩЩЩЩ.

Roshen, Roshen (UA) 2009 www.roshen.com www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS5XvGxgCDo

35

PREMIUM 僕らのヴァレンタイン、アルフォート。アルフォートミ ニ・チョコレート。プレミアムチョコレート。 Alfort mini, Bourbon Alfort (JP) 2016 www.bourbon.co.jp/alfortmini www.youtube.com/watch?v=I44o6UmPoKM

35

IMAGINATION Feed your imagination Wonka , Nestlé (CH) 2009 www.nestle.com/brands/allbrands/wonka

61

HEAVEN Sixpence worth of heaven Cadbury, Mondelēz International (UK) 1959 www.cadbury.co.uk

62

PASSION Crafted with perfection and passion by Lindt’s master chocolatiers Lindt Excellence, Lindt & Sprüngli (CH) 2005 www.lindt.ch www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9_H4UBTKgw

71

TASTY Confitones Ricolino Grupo Bimbo (MX) 1983 http://www.grupobimbo.com https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=19lCMv9o0pU

72

EMOTIONS Relleno de emociones Bon o bon, Arcor (AR) 2006 www.bonobon.com www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMrthMMS2DY

97

PLEASURE More pleasure, less guilt Hershey’s 100 Calorie Crisp Wafer Bars Hershey Company (US) 2006-2007 www.hersheys.com

98

FRIENDS トモッキー これからも、 ともだち Pocky, Glico (JP) 2017 www.pocky.jp/event/kaimei2017/ www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTSCeXe1eqQ

208

Index

107 LIKE Piace a tutti i bambini del mondo Kinder Brioss, Ferrero (IT) 2016 www.kinder.com www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcDsx4ERVL8 108 HEALTH Gezondheid met lepels Van Houten (NL) 1925-1926 www.vanhoutendrinks.com 133 LOVE We ♥ “pure” Meiji milk chocolate, Meiji Seika (JP) 2009 www.meiji.com www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhvZLjOInOE 134 SOFT

부드럽고 진한 쵸코렡

Lotte Choco Pie, Lotte Confectionery (KR) 1989 www.lotteconf.co.kr www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlcWqG0U9TQ

143 TENDER Durf teder te zijn Milka, Mondelēz International (CH) 2011 www.milka.com www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU4Vs8jv5Rs 144 PARADISE The taste of paradise Bounty, Mars (US) 1987 www.marschocolate.com www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmLC3BQb0GE 169 SMOOTH

Щ ЩЩЩЩЩЩЩ ЩЩЩ ЩЩЩЩЩЩ ЩЩ ЩЩЩЩЩЩ!

Alenka, United Confectioners (RU) 2009 www.uniconf.ru www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3OgmCPEmQM

170 REAL Enjoy finest, real chocolate covered peanuts Chocolade merk: Branch’s milk chocolate peanuts Ferrara (US) 1955 www.ferrarausa.com 179 GOODNESS 美味しさには勝てない Carré de chocolat, Morinaga (JP) 2008 www.morinaga.co.jp www.youtube.com/watch?v=B01f2C78ev4 180 CRAZY Crazy about chocolate, serious about people Tony’s Chocolonely, Tony’s Chocolonely (NL) 2012 www.tonyschocolonely.com www.facebook.com/TonysChocolonelyNL

Index of Secondary Images 1

Tiago Rosado, 2017 The Ivory Coast, Kokokouakoukro

116 Tiago Rosado, 2017 Burkina Faso, Bouroum Bouroum

4

Davide Ghelli Santuliana, 2017 Machete

124 Tiago Rosado, 2017 The Ivory Coast, Blaisekro

6

Tiago Rosado, 2017 The Ivory Coast, Kokokouakoukro

15

Daniel Rosenthal (laif), 2008 Day after day the workers beat up ripe cocoa fruit. The beans are dried and brought over muddy slopes for export to the coast.

16

Tiago Rosado, 2017 The Ivory Coast, Kokokouakoukro

24

Still from: From cocoa fields to classrooms: Preventing child labour in Côte d’Ivoire UNICEF, 2014

132 Benjamin Lowy (Getty Images), 2015 In small secluded farming commune near Abengourou a young boy - perhaps 10 years old - sits among a group of men in a tight circle around a mound of Cocoa melons, breaking them open and scooping the fleshy seeds out. Eventually the ‘meat’ of the fruit is discarded and the seeds set out to dry. These dry seeds become the basic ingredient for chocolate production.

Chocolate production has been plagued by the use of child labor with many companies unable or unwilling to halt the practice.

34

Christopher Anderson (Magnum Photos) The Ivory Coast, 2001.

A young Malian worker clearing crops to plant cocoa and coffee.

135 Davide Ghelli Santuliana, 2017 Tool 142 Davide Ghelli Santuliana, 2017 Cocoa powder

37

Davide Ghelli Santuliana, 2017 Cocoa fruit

41

Still from: Child Labour: The Dark Side of Chocolate 16x9 Global News (CA) 2012

44

Tiago Rosado, 2017 The Ivory Coast, Blaisekro

52

Tiago Rosado, 2017 The Ivory Coast, Kokokouakoukro

168 Alex Webb (Magnum Photos) São Tomé, Rosema, 2002 Drying of cocoa and beans

60

Benjamin Lowy (Getty Images), 2015 Men ride a motorbike near a small secluded farming commune near Abengourou, The Ivory Coast

181 Still from: Child labor in Ivory Coast Cocoa industries VOA News Africa 54 (USA) 2016

70

Davide Ghelli Santuliana, 2017 Cocoa beans

73

Still from: The dark side of chocolate Bastard Film & TV (DK) 2010

185 Daniel Rosenthal (laif), 2008 Jean-Baptiste drags 30 kilos of cocoa beans to the collecting point in the village of Sinikosson

80

Tiago Rosado, 2017 The Ivory Coast, Blaisekro

84

Still from: Chocolate Child Slaves CNN, 2012

88

Tiago Rosado, 2017 The Ivory Coast, Houphouetkro

96

Still from: Child workers boost Ivory Coast chocolate industry Al Jazeera, 2015

106 Tiago Rosado, 2017 Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou

209

Index

145 Still from: “Nestlé failing on child labour abuse, says FLA report” BBC News, 2012 152 Tiago Rosado, 2017 Burkina Faso, Bouroum Bouroum 160 Tiago Rosado, 2017 The Ivory Coast, Ecookim

189 Still from: TONY – Van chocoladecrimineel tot wereldverbeteraar Amstelfilm (NL) 2015 190 Martin Waalboer, 2016 Cocoa warehouse at the port of Antwerp 198 Luuk Kramer, 2017 Borsbeek, Belgium 206 Luuk Kramer, 2017 Borsbeek, Belgium

Sources Websites – www.cocoainitiative.org – www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/ child-labor/ghana#_ENREF_60 – www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/ child-labor/côte-dIvoire – www.histotheek.geschiedenisportaal. nl/?p=268 – www.icco.org/about-cocoa/growing-cocoa. html – www.interpol.int/News-and-media/ News/2009/N20090803 – www.reuters.com/article/ivorycoast-ghanacocoa-idUSL8N1HK5FX – www.tradingeconomics.com/commodity/ cocoa – www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/brief/ global-poverty-line-faq – www.worldcocoafoundation.org/ about-cocoa/history-of-cocoa/ , www. worldcocoafoundation.org/wp-content/ uploads/files_mf/howes1946.pdf – www.worldagroforestry.org/treesandmarkets/ inaforesta/history.htm Reports – Embode Ltd, Children at the Heart; Assessment of Child Labour and Child Slavery in Côte d’Ivoire’s Cocoa Sector and Recommendations to Mondelēz International, 2016 – Embode Ltd, Children at the Heart; Assessment of Child Labour and Child Slavery in Ghana’s Cocoa Sector and Recommendations to Mondelēz International, 2016 – Fountain, A.C. and Hütz-Adams, F., Cocoa Barometer 2015, 2015 – International Cocoa Organization, QBCS, Vol. XLIII No. 2, Cocoa year 2016/17, juni 2017 – KidsRights Foundation, Not So Sweet: Hazardous Child Labour, with a focus on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast, May 2014 – Stichting Vice Versa, Cacaospecial zomer 2016, jaargang 50, nummer 2, zomer 2016 – SÜDWIND e.V., Strengthening the competitiveness of cocoa production and improving the income of cocoa producers in West and Central Africa, 31 December 2016 – Tulane University, 2013/14 Survey Research on Child Labor in West African Cocoa Growing Areas, 30 July 2015 – SEO Amsterdam Economics, Market Concentration and Price Formation in the Global Cocoa Value Chain, 2016 Other – Tony’s Chocolonely, JaarFAIRslag 2015/2016

210

Index

211

About the collaborating parties

Joana Choumali (1974) is a visual artist/photographer based in Abidjan, the Ivory Coast. She studied graphic arts and worked as an art director in an advertising agency before embarking on her photography career. She works on conceptual portraits, mixed media and documentary photography. Much of her work focuses on Africa and what she, as an African, learns about the innumerable cultures around her.

In 2014, she won the POPCAP 14 Award and the LensCulture Emerging Talent Award.

In 2016, she received the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund and the Fourthwall Books Photobook Award in South Africa. Her book HAABRE was published in Johannesburg in 2016.

Marijn Heemskerk (1980) is a lawyer turned freelance journalist. She lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

As a lawyer, she investigated human trafficking, or modernday slavery, and continues to do so as a journalist. In 2016, she won the Sex and Media Prize awarded by the Dutch Scientific Association for Sexology for her article ‘Sex worker is not yet a normal profession, and that’s probably a good thing’, which she wrote for De Correspondent.

Madame Bernadette Ouédraogo, born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, is president of the Groupe de Recherche - Action pour le Développement Endogène de la Femme Rurale du Burkina Faso (GRADE-FRB). In 1984-1985 she represented Burkina Faso at an agricultural conference in Christchurch, New Zealand. In 1984-1985, she represented Burkina Faso at an agricultural conference in Christchurch, New Zealand. In preparation for the conference, she travelled to Burkina Faso and got to know the situation of the people in the rural areas of the country. With the GRADE-FRB association, she conducted a study into the worst forms of child labour in Burkina Faso in 2003. It led to the foundation of a rehabilitation and training shelter in 2016.

Founded in 1988, the GRADEFRB association is dedicated to the rights of women and children.

In this context, it provides a number of services to victims of abuse, including counselling and training. The organisation is based in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, it operates on a national scale.

Paradox is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 1993

by Bas Vroege.It is issuedriven, developing projects around contemporary issues with documentary authors: photographers, filmmakers, visual artists, writers and researchers. Paradox produces travelling exhibitions, films, (web) apps, organises symposia and publishes books.

Tony’s Chocolonely’s mission is to end slavery in the chocolate industry. The Amsterdam-based social enterprise was founded in 2005 by Dutch journalists after they discovered that the world’s largest chocolate companies were buying cocoa from plantations where child labour may be used.

It has 428 members and works with the government and other partners to achieve its mission of providing women and children with a better future. With support from the Chocolonely Foundation, GRADE-FRB opened a new shelter and training centre in 2016.

212

The recording of history as it is unfolding, and the interaction between social, economic and technical factors, with the changes in society which flow from these changes, are recurring aspects in Paradox’s thematic and monographic projects.

Through its products, Tony’s Chocolonely aims to encourage the chocolate industry, consumers and politicians to make 100% slave free chocolate the norm. To realise its mission, the company created a roadmap based on three pillars: create awareness, lead by example and inspire others to act.

About This Book Bitter Chocolate Stories is a collaboration between Joana Choumali, Marijn Heemskerk, Madame Bernadette Ouédraogo, GRADE-FRB, Kummer & Herrman, Paradox and Tony’s Chocolonely, which also funded the project.

The children portrayed in this book used to work on cocoa plantations. Now they live in a shelter near Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, where they are trained to be a mechanic, carpenter or tailor. The shelter, run by Madame Bernadette Ouédraogo of GRADE-FRB and her staff, receives financial support from the Chocolonely Foundation.

The farmers, cooperatives and villages we visited in the Ivory Coast work with Tony’s Chocolonely. The information gathered there was supplemented – in a limited amount of time – with information from the sources listed in the Index section.

Tony’s Chocolonely’s approach to tackling child labour and child slavery is an example. This book does not attempt to evaluate what other chocolate manufacturers are doing, and no other chocolate manufacturers were consulted.

A portion of the proceeds from the book and the exhibition will be donated to the GRADE-FRB shelter. This way, you also contribute to the future of the children in the shelter.

Tony’s Chocolonely made this book to raise awareness about what is wrong with the chocolate industry, and to encourage you to help put it right by contributing to our mission. Ultimately, child labour will only be eliminated if everyone in the chain takes responsibility.

Colophon Photography Joana Choumali Texts Marijn Heemskerk Timeline editor Cecily Layzell Additional images by Christopher Anderson Davide Ghelli Santuliana Luuk Kramier Benjamin Lowy Tiago Rosado Daniel Rosenthal Martin Waalboer Alex Webb Concept and design Kummer & Herrman, Utrecht (NL) Final editing Dutch Edith Vroon Translation Cecily Layzell Edith Vroon Editor Bas Vroege Picture editors Lise Straatsma Davide Ghelli Santuliana Bas Vroege Project management Hanneke Koster (K&H) Lys Romero Lise Straatsma Lithography Colour & Books, Apeldoorn (NL) Printing and binding NPN Drukkers, Breda (NL) Production Paradox, Edam (NL)

We wish to thank Hamadoum Tamboura, Joanny Sawadogo, Korotoum Doumbia, Desire Kabore, Yelkoumi Faycal, Abdul Aziz Bansé, Numphe sie Rodrigue, Sibiri Gansonre, Youssouf N’Djore, Allatin Brou, Marianna Kamara, Jean-François Ouffouet, Mr. Amani, Nathalie Duveiller, Sylvain Konan, Serge Lazare Ehouman, Desiré Kagamaté, Silue Zana, Kouamé Yacinthe Yoboué, Kamagaté Abou, Oumar Diaby, Aboubacar Siriki Kamagaté, Koffie Kouma, Kouakou Ahou Véronique, Kouadio Adjoua, Marcelle Bleava, Koffi Marus, Houphouet N’Guessan, Kouakou Barthélemy, Amichia Didier, Kra Jean Yao, Noufé Rodrigue, Arsène Bagre, Peter van Dalen, Ellen Vroonhof, Richard van Beuningen, Nadege, Nafisoto, Noutouh, Kadidiato, Ibrahim Nana, Khouroutoumi, Hermann Kom Kehi, Abdou Kaokré Savadogo, Magnum Photos, Hollandse Hoogte, Getty Images, Gerard Broeks (GB Edam BV), Bouwko Landstra, Nieuw Leven (Volendam), Tony’s Chocolonely (Diara Lô, Pascal van Ham, Marieke van Elk, Femke Lotgerink, Arjen Boekhold, Paul Schoenmakers, Anne-Wil Dijkstra, Henk Jan Beltman, Fleur Marnette-de Vries, Freek Wessels, Barry Sneek, Joost Rentema), Agnes Wijers, Floor van den Elsen.

Special thanks to Azu Nwagbogu (African Artists’ Foundation/LagosPhoto), Madame Bernadette Ouédraogo, Alexis Pooda, Augustin Kambou, Bassirou Traoré, Bèbè Oussé, Cathérine Kambou, Sansa Arnaud Cedric Dibloni, Edyon Kambiré, Ghislain Nikiéma, Issaka Kabré, Sami Josias Kambou, Kassoum Kambou, Laeticia Douamba, Abdoul Wakirou Mohamed Ilboudo, Sarata Zongo, Yéri Valerie Kambou.

This publication was produced with the kind support of Tony’s Chocolonely.

Paradox is supported by the Mondriaan Fund and others.

First edition © Joana Choumali for the images unless otherwise stated. © Marijn Heemskerk for the texts. © 2017 Paradox for this edition.

All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by Paradox PO Box 113 1135 ZK Edam The Netherlands info@paradox.nl www.paradox.nl ISBN 978-90-818876-9-4 Distributed by YdocPublishing PO Box 113 1135 ZK Edam, The Netherlands info@ydocfoundation.org www.ydocstore.org

Bitter Chocolate Stories takes us back to Tony’s Chocolonely’s journalistic roots. We revisited the shelter run by Madame Bernadette Ouédraogo for former child labourers, where in 2004, journalist Teun van de Keuken found the witnesses he needed to file a lawsuit against himself for his complicity, as a chocolate consumer, in child slavery. Thirteen years later, she still runs the shelter.

Tony’s Chocolonely donates 1% of its annual turnover to the Chocolonely Foundation. The Foundation is dedicated to eliminating slavery in the cocoa industry and supports cocoa-growing communities in a number of ways, including through school-funding and building projects.