Everyone has been deceived. Everyone has been lied to. Everybody has been misled. Everyone has deceived someone else, lied to someone else. But some have done so on the scale so large that the lives of African children are destroyed. We, as Americans, as chocolate consumers, have been deceived, and the children of West Africa have to pay the price.
While Americans and Europeans are cutting open the wrappers of chocolate bar, enslaved children in Africa have been cutting open cocoa pods. In Mali, Ghana and Burkina Faso, children are kidnapped to work in cocoa plantations. The plan traffickers make to lure children to torture is elaborate. This is how it works, being put simply:
In West African countries such as Mali, with one of the highest poverty rates, children are sent by their parents to find legitimate work, and bring money home every day. Traffickers entrap children by offering a job with decent pay and good working conditions. On top of that, abductors assure education as well. For the children, this job is just too good to pass up. Traffickers bring children on their motorbikes to Ivory Coast, (also known as Cote d’Ivoire) and children are dismayed to learn that all that was promised was false, and they are to work as slave in the cocoa plantation, normally never seeing their families again.
Another method to capture children is by straight out taking them away. This usually happens at busy bus stations near the border of Mali and Ivory Coast where children walk away from their parents in the chaos of the crowd.
Farmers pay traffickers for abducting the children. A child kidnapped from Burkina Faso is $287.10. This includes indefinite use of the child. If the slaves work slow, refuse to work, or attempt an escape, they must face a ruthless beating from the farmer. Slaves are forced to carry sacks of cocoa pods three times their weight, only 10 or 11 years old. Children abducted can be 9 to 14 years old, but no one is ever out of the woods. Yaya Konate, an escaped slave, confirmed this statement. He was asked, “Did you want to go work on a cocoa plantation?” “No” he answered. “The traffickers tricked us to go with them.”
After learning all the inhumane actions inflicted upon the child slaves - the dehumanization, the oppression, all our heads immediately turn to the farmer. It is he who distributes the beatings without mercy, it is he who treats the child slaves with the belief that they are not human. In absolutely NO circumstance is doing what the farmer does to the children correct - however we must look to the cocoa exporters who are “paying” the farmer. Cacao (cacao is another name for cocoa) farmers get paid only about $2 per day - that is hardly enough to take care of oneself, let alone hire legitimate workers. SAF Cacao, a cacao exporter that makes over 135 million euros per year ( about $143,000,000) cannot even spare enough money so that farmers can hire legitimate workers? If cocoa exporters pay a fair wage to farmers to support the farm and hire paid workers, those suffering may be put out of their misery.
Ali Lakiss, CEO and Owner of SAF Cacao claimed, “I can assure the whole world and not only America and Europe that the Ivory Coast is a country with no child slaves in the plantations. No children work in the plantations. That has been confirmed.” Apparently, Ali Lakiss has been getting incorrect information, because journalist and director of the video “The Dark Side of Chocolate” found plentiful children working in SAF Cacao plantations picked at random.
The cacao exporters are not the only guilty party. Chocolate companies such as Nestle, Hershey’s, Barry Callebaut, Cargill, Mars, and more have been exploiting children - since they have been profiting from the forced child labor, the above companies are making no or very little effort to clean up the cocoa industry. However, there are some chocolate companies who will not tolerate human trafficking. Newman’s Own, Ben and Jerry’s, Whole Foods Brand (365), Endangered Species chocolate, plus many more produce fair trade chocolate.
It is our job and our responsibility that we change the abominable actions that have been acceptable for who knows how long. What we do know is that we, as the consumers, have the power to cease child labor in the chocolate industry. We must end this injustice, and we must end it now. The events child slaves are going through are vile and inhumane - no one  ever deserves to be treated in the way those enslaved are treated. We can make it end for good. We just have to be willing to make it happen.