REUTERS, London | Friday
BRITISH chocolate makers are to investigate reports of widespread child slave labour on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast and insist they will take action if such “abhorrent practices” are discovered.
Ivorian cocoa producers and international cocoa traders say a British television documentary exaggerates how West African children have been lured into a life of slavery.
“We do not believe that the farms visited by the programme are in the least representative of cocoa farming in Cote d’Ivoire, although the claims cannot be ignored,” the Biscuit, Cake Chocolate and Confectionery Alliance (BCCCA) said in a statement.
“If any evidence of these abhorrent practices is revealed, we will inform the appropriate authorities and insist they take the necessary preventive action.”
Authorities in the Ivory Coast and Mali admit there is a child labour problem, but say they are tackling it.
Cocoa producers add that figures available from official and independent sources suggest the documentary has overstated the extent of the problem.
Some news reports related to the television programme say that it alleges up to 90% of cocoa beans in Ivory Coast are harvested by child slaves.
Several traders also said they doubted the extent to which Ivorian farmers use Malian children to harvest cocoa, but added that they were aware of the practice.
“It’s no great surprise and I think everyone knows this has been going on for ages,” one trader said. “It looks very dramatic when you see (the word) slavery but I’m not quite sure that it’s slavery as you and I understand it.”
Ivory Coast and Mali signed an agreement on September 1 in Bouake, Ivory Coast’s second city, aimed at halting trafficking in child labour – the first pact of its kind in Africa.
According to Malian estimates, more than 15000 young Malians may be working on cocoa, coffee, rubber, palmoil and other plantations in its West African neighbour.
But the BCCCA said neither it nor its members had ever “seen or heard of slavery on cocoa farms” in Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer which supplies 40% of the global crop.