The Topeka Center for Peace and Justice showed a documentary, called " The Dark Side of Chocolate", exposing child labor and human trafficking in cocoa plantations.
The documentary brought to light the issue of child labor and human trafficking on the cocoa plantations of Africa. These plantations grow and harvest the cocoa beans for big name chocolate companies such as Nestlé.
The film starts with its two film makers doing their own investigation by journeying to the western coast of Africa to the country of Mali. This is where children were rumored to be smuggled from and transported to the Ivory Coast.
Their detective work led them to find that Mali was trafficking children at bus stations, by bribing them with work and money or simply kidnapping them from villages. They are then taken to towns near the border such as Zegoua, where another trafficker transports the children over the border on a dirt-bike via back-roads, where they are left with a third trafficker who then sells the children to plantations. Ranging from age 10 to 15, these children are forced to do hard labor, physically and sexually abused and are usually never paid. Most of them stay with the plantation until they die, never seeing their family again.
The chocolate industry is marred with child slavery!
Please read full article: The dark side of chocolate
Picture credited to http://www.treehuggers.com/
The documentary brought to light the issue of child labor and human trafficking on the cocoa plantations of Africa. These plantations grow and harvest the cocoa beans for big name chocolate companies such as Nestlé.
The film starts with its two film makers doing their own investigation by journeying to the western coast of Africa to the country of Mali. This is where children were rumored to be smuggled from and transported to the Ivory Coast.
Their detective work led them to find that Mali was trafficking children at bus stations, by bribing them with work and money or simply kidnapping them from villages. They are then taken to towns near the border such as Zegoua, where another trafficker transports the children over the border on a dirt-bike via back-roads, where they are left with a third trafficker who then sells the children to plantations. Ranging from age 10 to 15, these children are forced to do hard labor, physically and sexually abused and are usually never paid. Most of them stay with the plantation until they die, never seeing their family again.
The chocolate industry is marred with child slavery!
Please read full article: The dark side of chocolate
Picture credited to http://www.treehuggers.com/
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