Ivory Coast Fights Against Child Slavery

After watching the documentary The Dark Side of Chocolate in class, I was absolutely astonished at how much the chocolate industry relies on child slavery for their cocoa. I recently did some research on the Ivory Coast for my second paper of the semester. In 2011, the west African country announced plans to spend ­almost €20 million ($30m) between 2015-17 to reduce the number of minors working on plantations by 30 per cent by 2017 and 70 per cent by 2020. The government of the Ivory Coast has tried to combat child slavery by increasing their education budget exponentially. Since 2011, 17,829 classrooms have been built or restored, ­according to the National Monitoring Committee, which is charged with overseeing the ­government’s anti-child labour efforts. The government hopes that the education plan will break the cycle of children following their parents into the fields at a young age, and the children who continue in school will learn trades and skills that will allow them to get a job other than working in the fields that will provide for their families. The Nestle corporation has also joined the fight and privately funded 40 schools in the country, however much more help is needed.

Despite the efforts, recent figures highlight the challenges in the battle. Between 300,000 and one million children are still estimated to work in the sector, ­according to a report by the International Cocoa Initiative, an ­organization created by the chocolate industry to fight the exploitation of minors. Other private chocolate companies that make billions of dollars every year have to step up and not only build schools like Nestle, but only buy from Fairtrade farmers that guarantee their product is free of slave labor.