CQ West: Unfolding Stories 4

Location: Cote d’Ivoire & Ghana
Subject: Child workers, human traffic, forced
labour. Smallholder cacao farms in West
Africa produce 70% of the world’s cacao
beans. ‘Middle men’ sell the beans to
companies familiar to us: Nestle, Mars,
Hershey, Ferrero, Godiva……….
Over 2 million children currently work on the
farms. Children as young as 5 are lured with
promises of education, money, bicycles, a
better life… many are trafficked from Mali or
Burkina Faso by smugglers who sell them on.
Outcome: suffering, hunger, beatings, injury
from heavy lifting, accidents whilst using
machetes, contamination from crop
spraying, little or no education.
This is all illegal. These children are the not-so
secret workers, hiding in the undergrowth.
Chocolate companies blame the farms.
Farms blame the low price they are paid for
their beans. 19 years ago the big chocolate
companies signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol
and promised to end the use of child
workers. Their promises have still not been
kept.
Dirty Secret 104cm x 90cm (right)
Für Die Kinder 78cm x 68cm (opposite)