Chocolate, Slavery and Debt
M
any of us love chocolate. Some would even say they are chocoholics! While you are dreaming of a chocolate snack, do you ever wonder where the chocolate comes from before it melts so wonderfully in your mouth?
There is an interesting but largely unrecognised link between us, our eating habits and the people who produce what we eat. One connection is between the production and marketing of chocolate, slave labour and the debt burden of poor countries. This link demonstrates how our love of chocolate can sometimes increase the suffering of our brothers and sisters in poorer countries. The material below describes the link and offers suggestions for action.
In Australia children, families, schools and community groups are targeted by chocolate manufacturers. Schools and community groups need money. Chocolate companies offer to help them raise funds and in turn sell a lot of chocolate. Who is helping whom?
In Australia today major religious festivals have become marketing opportunities. At Easter, when Christians focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the spotlight is on chocolate.
During Lent, Christians are reminded to repent and live the Gospel. Jesus lived and died to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim that captives be released, to bring sight to the blind and to let the oppressed go free. Luke 4:18
As we continue to celebrate the risen Christ, we are challenged to see the signs of our times, to learn who are the poor, the captives, and the oppressed in our world and to work to give them life.
- Which Country Consumes the Most Easter Eggs?
- How is Chocolate Made?
- Where Does Chocolate Come From?
- The Link between Debt, Slavery and Chocolate
- The Harkin-Engel Protocol
- Real Solutions
- What if we feel guilty?
- Some Ideas and Questions for you to Explore
- Links
- What Can we Do? Take Action!
Which Country Consumes the Most Easter Eggs?
That's right. We do. Australians are the largest consumers of Easter eggs in the world.
Every year Australians buy around 200 million Easter eggs. In recent years Australians have consumed an average of 10 Easter eggs per person.
Source: Confectionary Manufacturers of Australasia www.candy.net.au
Chocolate is made from the cacao bean which grows in a cacao pod on the cacao tree. This tree can grow up to 40 metres in height. From 25 to 50 cacao beans are extracted from a cacao pod. These beans are fermented and dried before they are processed into chocolate or cocoa. Cacao beans contain a large amount of fat and small amounts of mildly stimulating alkaloids which include caffeine.
The beans are roasted and ground in order to remove the fat. The fat is cocoa butter. Cocoa butter is also used in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Ordinary chocolate is made by adding extra cocoa butter to ground beans.
Source: www.ext.vt.edu/departments/envirohort/factsheets2/landsnurs/jan89pr2.html
Where Does Chocolate Come From
The six largest cocoa producing nations are the Ivory Coast (Cote d'Ivoire), Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil and Cameroon. Cocoa accounts for 40 percent of Ghana's export earnings. 2 million Ghanian farmers are involved in the production of cocoa. The Cote d'Ivoire is the world's leading producer with 43 percent of the world's crop grown mainly on small holdings. Cocoa represents 90 percent of Cote d'Ivoire's foreign exchange earnings.
The price of cocoa fluctuates due to the de-regulation of the West African market and overproduction. De-regulation led to commodity boards across the region being abolished. As a result small farmers no longer had any bargaining power and were left to deal with the middlemen themselves. This resulted in a loss of income. The need to cut costs has also seen a rise in the need for cheap labour. This has meant that boys and men are being lured to Cote d'Ivoire from even poorer neighbouring countries with promises of work. Once there they are often not paid for their work or they are forced into slavery. They work in hot, dangerous conditions. The young boys are sometimes kept on the farms through violence and threats of violence or through the threat of folk spells. Many other children do not attend school because they are required to work on the cocoa farms, another form of slave labour.
"Victor, a young boy who escaped from slavery on a cocoa plantation, had never tasted chocolate. When asked what he would say to those who buy the chocolate that he helped produce, he replied: "They buy something I suffer to make. They are eating my flesh."
Sources:
www.iabolish.org/slavery_today/products/index.html
www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fair-trade/cocoa/background.html
www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/cocoa/iloChildLabor2001.pdf
The Link between Debt, Slavery and Chocolate
Debt remains one of the largest barriers to human development. Each year developing countries pay $240 billion to their debtors in the rich world, which is equivalent to over three times the amount they need to reach the Millennium Development Goals.
Except for Brazil, the cocoa producing nations are among the countries identified as the poorest in the world: On the United Nations Human Development Index, Cote D'Ivoire is 164th in the world, Ghana is 136th, Cameroon is 144th, Nigeria is 159th, and Indonesia is 108th.
Analysis from Jubilee Research UK www.jubileeresearch.org/ shows that Cote d'Ivoire will need total debt cancellation, plus significant increases in aid, if it is to have any hope of meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals. The one-off partial debt cancellation of Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria will not be enough for them to meet the MDGs by 2015.
Much of the debt was illegitimate - this debt includes money that was lent to oppressive regimes with the knowledge that it would not benefit the people; money for failed projects carried out on the advice of creditors; money lent on extortionate or unreasonable terms; money lent to governments which stole the funds through corruption. Creditors have a co-responsibility for illegitimate debts. Debts that are considered unjust in these terms need to be cancelled in full. The money that is being paid on debt servicing should be used for schools, hospitals and meeting basic needs, thus contributing to the elimination of the slave conditions on the cocoa farms. Worldwide the Columbans are campaigning for cancellation of unjust debt and a fair and transparent global financial system.
Sources:
www.jubileeaustralia.org
www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/?lid=2647
http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/countries/
By 2000, because of pressure by the public and non-government organizations, the chocolate industry was faced with the reality of slavery being involved in the production of chocolate. In October 2001, the Harkin-Engel Protocol was developed between chocolate manufacturers, antislavery groups and US government agencies. This voluntary protocol was to work to end the worst forms of child labour and to ensure that slavery would no longer be used to produce chocolate and cocoa by 2005. It was named after two US congressmen who originally pushed in 2001 for the legislation that was passed in the House of Representatives requiring mandatory labeling of chocolate products which would state that the products were slave-free. Slave-free labeling of chocolate products in the US and elsewhere still has not occurred.
The deadline of 2005 passed and little had changed. An extended deadline of July 2008 was made for a report to be presented on work undertaken through the International Cocoa Initiative. The ICI, begun in 2002, is a partnership between NGOs, labour unions, cocoa processors and the major chocolate brands. The initiative is one of independently verified data collection about labour practices on 50% of the cocoa farms in Ghana and the CoteD’Ivoire.
This is a major step forward in that chocolate manufacturers and governments have acknowledged the situation and identified some of the major issues that need to be addressed. As members of the IFI they have stated that the elimination of child labour must be based on thriving cocoa growing communities. The Confectionery Manufacturers of Australasia has also stated that it will work to end the worst forms of child slavery. The verification report released in December 2008 includes suggestions for improvements.
www.cocoainitiative.org
www.cocoaverification.net
www.candy.net.au
Real Solutions
Data collection, while one strategy, is not credible certification that the chocolate we eat is free from exploited labour. It does not deal with the structural injustices which underpin the abuses. Two solutions are:
Fair Trade
Fair Trade certified chocolate ensures sustainable agricultural practices, greater income for the producers, fairer community development and contributes to the local economy.
Debt Justice
Debt cancellation for Cote D’Ivoire along with fair and transparent new loans for West African cocoa producing countries would enable the implementation of poverty reduction strategies and the diversion of income to basic services.
Should we think that everything is too hard and just curl up in a ball and not consider the issues of chocolate slavery and debt? What we can do is take that feeling and make positive use of it. We should feel uncomfortable when we learn that the people who produce something that is a treat for us, are themselves treated like slaves. That uncomfortable feeling is probably our conscience reminding us not to accept injustice. It should prompt us to investigate for ourselves the connections between chocolate and slavery and debt. We need to understand the connections between Victor in Mali and ourselves in Australia.
Some Ideas and Questions for you to Explore
- Who is supplying the information about chocolate?
- Whose interests are being served by this information?
- Where does Australia source its chocolate from?
- Is an organization
that declares itself a Free Trade organization also an organization that
behaves ethically and morally? Read "Wake Up and Smell the Coffee", Chris
Blackhurst, The Tablet, 4 March 2006. http://www.thetablet.co.uk/articles/355/
about fair-trade and corporate ethics
(back to top)
Fair Trade benefits producers and community development
and helps the economy. Fair Trade chocolate is now available in Australia
For more information and if you would like help to
conduct a workshop at your school contact:
Anne Lanyon,
Co-ordinator Columban Centre for Peace
Ecology and Justice,
167 Albert Road,
Strathfield,
Ph: (02) 9352 8021
email: annelanyon.com@columban.org.au
