Hershey, Nestlé and Mars broke their commitment to end child labor in chocolate production

GUIGLO, Ivory Coast – Five boys swing machetes into a cocoa farm, slowly advancing against a wall of scrub. Their expressions are impbadive, almost empty, and they rarely speak. The only sounds in the still air are the whoosh blades cutting through tall grbad and metal pings when they hit something stronger.

Each of the boys crossed the border months or years ago from Burkina Faso, an impoverished West African country, taking a bus to get home and his parents to Cote d'Ivoire, where hundreds of thousands of small farms have been dug in the forest.

These farms are the largest source of cocoa in the world and the scene of a child labor epidemic that the world's largest chocolate companies promised to eradicate almost 20 years ago.

"How old are you?" Asks a Washington Post reporter to one of the older boys.

"Nineteen," says Abu Traore in a calm voice. Under Ivorian labor legislation, this would make it legal. But as he speaks, he takes a nervous look at the farmer who oversees his work several steps away. When the farmer is distracted, Abu squats and writes with his finger a different answer in the gray sand: 15.

Then, to make sure he is well understood, he also blinks with his hands. He says that he has been working in cocoa plantations in Côte d'Ivoire since the age of 10. The other four boys say they are young too – one says he is 15, two is 14 and another 13.

Abu says his back hurts and he is hungry.

"I came here to go to school," says Abu. "I have not been to school for five years now."

& # 39; Too little, too late & # 39;

The chocolate makers of the world have missed deadlines to eliminate child labor from their cocoa supply chains in 2005, 2008 and 2010. Next year, they will have to face another deadline and , according to industry officials, they will probably have also missed it.

As a result, it is highly likely that a chocolate bar purchased in the United States is the product of child labor.

About two-thirds of global cocoa production comes from West Africa, where, according to a 2015 US Department of Labor report, more than 2 million children were engaged in hazardous work in food-producing areas. cocoa.

Asked this spring, some of the biggest and best-known brands – Hershey, Mars and Nestle – could not guarantee that their chocolates would be produced without child labor.

"I will not make these claims," ​​said a leader of one of the big chocolate companies.

One reason is that nearly 20 years after being committed to eradicating child labor, chocolate companies still can not identify farms from where all their cocoa comes from, let alone if child labor was used to produce it. Mars, maker of M & M's and Milky Way, can only trace 24% of its cocoa to farms; Hershey, the maker of Kisses and Reese, less than half; Nestlé can track 49% of its global cocoa supply on farms.

With the growth of the global economy, Americans have become accustomed to reports of exploitation by workers and the environment in distant places. But, according to the experts, the evidence of wrongdoing is so obvious, the promises of ambitious reforms of the sector and the violation of these obvious promises.

The promises of the industry began in 2001 when, under pressure from the US Congress, the heads of some of the largest chocolate companies signed a pledge to eliminate "the worst forms of child labor" from their West African cocoa suppliers. It was a project that the companies had agreed to complete in four years.

To succeed, companies will have to overcome the powerful economic forces that drag children into forced labor in one of the poorest countries in the world. And they should develop a certification system to ensure consumers that an M & M's bag or a peanut butter cup Reese was not created by a machete tipped by a boy like Abu.

Since then, the chocolate industry has also reduced its ambitions. While the initial promise called for the eradication of child labor in West African cocoa fields and set a deadline for 2005, next year's target only calls for a 70% cut.

Timothy S. McCoy, vice president of the World Cocoa Foundation, a Washington-based professional group, said that when the industry signed the 2001 agreement, "the actual scale of the work of the children in the cocoa supply chain and how to fight the phenomenon ". have been misunderstood. "

Industry representatives pointed out that, in accordance with the commitment made by lawmakers, governments and trade unions in West Africa also have a share of responsibility in the Eradication of child labor.

Today, McCoy said, companies have "made great strides", including building schools, supporting farmer cooperatives and advising farmers on better production methods.

In statements, some of the world's largest chocolate companies that signed the deal – Hershey, Mars and Nestle – said they have taken steps to reduce their reliance on child labor.

Other non-signatory companies, such as Mondelez and Godiva, have also taken such measures, but would not guarantee that any of their products would be free of child labor.

In total, the industry, which generates an estimated $ 103 billion a year, has spent more than $ 150 million over 18 years to solve this problem.

But when companies initially promised to eliminate child labor, according to insiders and industry documents, they were not sure how to do it. According to industry critics, their efforts have been paralyzed by indecision and insufficient financial commitment.

Their most important effort – buying cocoa that has been "certified" for ethical business practices by third-party groups such as Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance, has been weakened by a lack of rigorous enforcement of child labor rules . As a rule, third-party inspectors are required to visit less than 10% of cocoa farms.

"Companies have always done just enough so that, if the attention of the media attracts attention, they can say," Hey guys, that's what we do, "said Antonie Fountain , executive director of Voice Network, a coordinating group seeking to end child labor in the cocoa industry. "It's still too little, too late, it still is.

"We did not eliminate child labor because nobody was forced to do it," Fountain added. "What was the consequence? . . to not achieve the goals? How many fines have they been sentenced? How many prison sentences? No. There was no consequence.

According to the US Department of Labor, a majority of the 2 million child cocoa industry workers live on their parent's farms and perform the type of hazardous work – swinging machetes, carrying heavy loads, spraying pesticides – according to international authorities. worst forms of child labor.

A smaller number, trafficked from neighboring countries, are in the most serious situations.

During a trip to Côte d'Ivoire's cocoa growing areas in March, Washington Post journalists spoke to 12 children who said they had come from Burkina Faso, unaccompanied by their parents, to work in cocoa.

Although given ages correspond to their appearance, Swiss Post could not verify their dates of birth. In much of Burkina Faso, up to 40% of births are not recorded in official records and many children do not have identification documents.

Farms were visited easily because they usually lack fences, but people were often reluctant to talk about child labor, which is known to be illegal and is officially discouraged.

When asked about the number of migrant children working in Ivorian cocoa farms, the farmer who oversaw Abu and the other boys pointed to the constant number of buses carrying people from Burkina Faso to the area. Post reporters also observed these buses during the March visit.

There are "many who arrive," said the farmer, who asked that his name not be used because he did not want to draw the attention of the authorities. "They are the ones doing the work."

The farmer said that he was paying the "big boss" of the boy, the "big boss" who runs the boys, just under $ 9 per child for a work week and who would each pay in turn about the half of the boys. this.

The farmer stated that he considered the treatment of boys unfair, but that he was hired because he needed help. The low price of cocoa makes life difficult for everyone, he said.

"I confess that it's kind of slavery," said the farmer. "They are still children and they have the right to be educated today. But they bring them here to work, and the boss takes the money. "

"It happens on a large scale"

The eradication of child labor is a daunting task because, according to most accounts, it is rooted in poverty.

The typical Ivorian cocoa crop is small – less than 10 acres – and the farmer's annual household income is about $ 1,900, according to a Fairtrade study, one of the groups that issues a label supposed to guarantee methods ethical business. This amount is well below the World Bank defined levels as the poverty of a typical family. About 60% of the country's rural population does not have access to electricity, and according to UNESCO, Côte d'Ivoire's literacy rate is around 44%.

With such low wages, Ivorian parents often can not afford to send their children to school – they use them instead on the farm.

The other workers are from the steady stream of migrant children taken to Côte d 'Ivoire by people other than their parents. According to estimates from a survey conducted in 2018 by a researcher at Tulane University, at least 16,000 children, and perhaps many more, are forced to work in African cocoa farms. from the West.

"There is evidence that this is happening, and it is happening on a large scale," said Elke de Buhr, badistant professor and senior researcher of the study, conducted in collaboration with Walk Free Foundation, a group working to bring end forced labor. financed by the Fondation Stichting de Chocolonely.

Migrant children arrive in the midst of a large wave of people arriving from Burkina Faso and Mali. According to the United Nations, Côte d 'Ivoire hosts 1.3 million Burkinabe migrants and 360,000 Malian migrants. Mali, Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire share an agreement on the opening of borders.

On their arrival in cocoa production areas in Côte d'Ivoire, migrant children are used to meet the demand for hard manual labor on cocoa farms and to stay there all year round. There is land to clear, usually with machetes; pesticide spraying; and more machetes are working to gather and split the cocoa pods. Finally, the job is to carry bags of cocoa that can weigh more than 100 pounds.

"Côte d'Ivoire has long been considered a land of better opportunities in this part of the world," said industry spokesman McCoy. "This particular type of trafficking concerns a larger phenomenon that is not specific to cocoa, is not specific to Ivory Coast but speaks to people looking for opportunities and opportunities. it happens everywhere in the world. "

& # 39; We are hungry & # 39;

From the Ivorian capital of Abidjan, the village of Bonon is a five-hour drive along two-lane, potholed, ponds the size of a pond. From the outskirts of the village, trails lead to the surrounding forests, where farmers have created cacao groves.

One day in March, in a wooded area, another group of boys worked with machetes. Each of them said that they came from Burkina Faso to work in the cocoa plantations in Côte d'Ivoire.

As teenagers elsewhere, boys near Bonon – Abu Ouedrago, 15; Karim Bakary, 16 years old; and Aboudnamune Ouedrago, 13 – wore colorful sportswear. But they sleep in huts in the woods, spend their days doing hard labor and do not go to school or see their families. Karim's yellow Adidas shirt was spotted. When one of the boys gets sick, they say that they put their money together to go to the pharmacy.

During a break in the typical March day – where the temperature was in the 90s – the boys shared water collected in a bucket from a pond nearby. It was milky white.

They claimed to have come in search of a better life and touching around 85 cents a day.

"There is no money in Burkina," said Karim, who said he arrived here four years ago when he was 12 years old. "We are suffering a lot to get money there. We came here to have some money to eat.

Once, he said proudly, he was able to send money home: $ 34. He said that he would like to stay in Ivory Coast to earn more money.

The darkest of the three was Aboudnamune. He wore a Spider-Man baseball cap and rarely smiled. He said he arrived two years ago at the age of 11. He answered questions hesitantly, sometimes looking away, and said he would like to see his parents because "it's been a long time".

"Yes, it's a little hard," he said about his life in cocoa plantations. "We are hungry and we earn little money."

A 2009 Tulane survey, based on interviews with 600 former migrant workers in the cocoa sector, cast a gloomy glance on the economic factors leading to child trafficking. Traffickers usually offer children, as young as 10, money or more specific incentives, such as bicycles, to take the bus to Côte d'Ivoire. About half of those surveyed said they were not free to return home and more than two-thirds said they had been physically abused or threatened. Most had looked for work and some said that the money promised to them had never been paid.

The man who ran the boys for the farm owner, who refused to give his name, offered his point of view.

"Their parents abandoned them," he said. "They come here to make a living."

Then, apparently preoccupied with the attention of the pbaders-by interview, he asked The Post reporters to leave the farm.

"A moral responsibility"

The most important and sustained public attention on the issue was raised 18 years ago with news reports from news agencies and the US State Department that link American chocolate to the US. Slavery of children in West Africa.

"There is a moral responsibility. . . for us not to allow slavery, child slavery, in the 21st century, "said Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) representative at the time.

Engel introduced a bill that would have created a federal system of labeling indicating whether slave children had been used for growing and harvesting cocoa. He has allocated $ 250,000 to the Food and Drug Administration to develop the labels.

The measure was pbaded in the House, but the industry was adamant that no government regulation was necessary.

"We do not need legislation to solve the problem," said Susan Smith, a spokeswoman for the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, at the time. "We are already acting."

Engel, then Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has chosen to negotiate an agreement with chocolate manufacturers.

Now known as the Harkin-Engel protocol, this deal prevented federal regulators from controlling the supply of chocolate.

However, the agreement commits chocolate companies to eliminate child labor from their supply chains and to develop and implement "public certification standards", which would indicate that Cocoa was produced "without any of the worst forms of child labor".

Senior executives from Hershey, Mars, Nestle USA and five other chocolate companies signed the deal. Lawmakers said the signatory companies had "primary responsibility" to eradicate child labor, but the Ivorian government, labor organizations and a consumer group also announced their support.

The protocol also specified a deadline: July 2005.

Over the next few years, the industry has taken up the challenge with working groups, pilot programs and attempts to redefine its promises.

The industry has created the International Cocoa Initiative, supposed to coordinate the efforts of the company. The companies also formed a short-term panel called the Audit Working Group. In West Africa, the industry has supported pilot child labor monitoring projects.

Even some insiders say that the first efforts were doomed to failure.

Peter McAllister, who led the International Cocoa Initiative from 2003 to 2010, said companies were "desperate" to avoid legislation and promised to do more than they could.

"Is there a chance that child labor will be eradicated by 2005? No, never, says McAllister. "They prepared for disaster because of this magical rendezvous."

"One leader said at that time," We would have signed a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, "McAllister said.

Yet the industry seemed to be moving forward. In February 2005, Smith, of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, told an NPR interviewer that the deadline would be met.

"We have met all deadlines set in the memorandum of understanding, and we will continue to do so," she said. "We have implemented large-scale testing of the monitoring system and the independent verification system. Those who are happening now. "

But as Engel and others have pointed out at the time, the companies were not about to meet the four month deadline. There were no consumer labels in the works; there was no clear verification system; the worst forms of child labor have not been eradicated.

Shortly after the expiration of the deadline, the industry sought to reconstruct the meaning of a key clause of the agreement.

In 2007, industry representatives argued that the promised "public certification standards" did not mean, as some negotiators thought, the creation of consumer labels stating that a tablet of chocolate was free of child labor.

"Everyone in the room negotiating understood that we were there to create a labeling requirement," said J. William Goold, Harkin's chief negotiator for the transaction, in an interview devoted to this article. . "We were talking about consumer labels on chocolate. Anyone who thinks that the language used in Harkin-Engel means that anything other than consumer labeling engages in a cynical auto-illusion. "

The industry said the agreement meant rather that companies would produce statistics on "working conditions" and "levels" of child labor in West Africa in Africa. 39; West.

In 2011, ten years after the signing of the agreement, industry representatives also indicated that they had engaged businesses in an impossible task.

"The industry does not actually know [certification] system that, currently or in the short term, can guarantee the absence of child labor, including trafficking, in cocoa production in West Africa ", according to a 2011 letter from an industrial group representing Hershey , Mars, Nestlé and other companies. , aux chercheurs travaillant sur une étude financée par le US Labor Department.

"Il n'y avait – et il n'y a pas – de feuille de route pour mettre en œuvre le Protocole", indique la lettre. «L’industrie a exécuté cet accord de bonne foi, tout en reconnaissant plusieurs échecs».

"La certification ne suffit pas"

Alors que l'industrie s'efforçait de mettre en place son propre système de surveillance du travail des enfants, elle a de plus en plus recours à des tiers pour s'attaquer au problème.

Trois groupes à but non lucratif – Fairtrade, Utz et Rainforest Alliance – attribuent des étiquettes aux produits fabriqués conformément à leurs normes éthiques, qui incluent une interdiction du travail des enfants.

Au cours de la dernière décennie, les fabricants de chocolat se sont engagés à acheter des quantités croissantes de cacao certifié par l’un de ces trois groupes. Mars rapporte avoir acheté environ la moitié de son cacao à des sources certifiées; Hershey rapporte 80%. En contrepartie du respect des normes éthiques du groupe, les agriculteurs sont payés jusqu'à 10% de plus pour leur cacao.

Pourtant, certaines entreprises reconnaissent que ces certifications ont été insuffisantes pour relever le défi du travail des enfants. Les inspections des exploitations agricoles sont tellement sporadiques et si facilement évitées que même certaines entreprises de chocolat qui ont utilisé les étiquettes reconnaissent ne pas éliminer le travail des enfants.

Les inspections des étiquettes sont généralement annoncées à l’avance et concernent moins de 1 exploitation agricole sur 10 par an, selon les groupes.

«En termes simples, lorsque le [certification] des auditeurs sont venus, les enfants ont été emmenés des champs et, lors de leur entretien, les agriculteurs ont nié y être allés », selon un rapport de Nestlé en 2017.

"La certification ne suffit pas", a déclaré à Reuters John Ament, vice-président mondial de Mars pour le cacao, en septembre.

Dans une lettre aux chercheurs de 2011, un groupe industriel représentant Mars et Hershey a déclaré: «En l'absence de surveillance au niveau de l'exploitation, aucun des trois principaux« certificateurs de produits »n'a prétendu offrir une garantie en matière de pratiques de travail. "

Les représentants des groupes de certification reconnaissent que leurs étiquettes sont des outils imparfaits pour l’éradication du travail des enfants et qu’ils améliorent leurs méthodes.

«Le travail des enfants dans l'industrie du cacao continuera d'être une lutte tant que nous continuerons à payer aux agriculteurs une fraction du coût d'une production durable. . . . Fairtrade n’est pas une solution parfaite », a déclaré Bryan Lew, directeur de l’exploitation de Fairtrade America. Mais, a-t-il dit, les prix plus élevés du cacao certifié et les efforts du groupe pour organiser des coopératives d'agriculteurs sont un pas en avant pour atténuer sa cause première: la pauvreté.

Tandis que la plupart des grandes entreprises chocolatières cherchent à acheter au moins un peu de cacao «certifié», Hershey a davantage recherché la certification que d’autres.

Hershey "s'approvisionnera à 100% en cacao pour ses gammes de produits chocolatés mondiales d'ici 2020 et accélérera ses programmes visant à éliminer le travail des enfants dans les régions cacaoyères d'Afrique de l'Ouest", a annoncé la société dans un communiqué de presse publié en 2012.

Leigh Horner, vice-président de la communication et du développement durable chez Hershey, a déclaré que les efforts de la société ne reposaient pas uniquement sur les certifications. Il les considère plutôt «comme l'un des nombreux outils et stratégies à déployer. . . . Sans le soutien des gouvernements locaux, ces divers efforts ne fonctionneront pas. "

«Gravement inadéquat»

Un jour de mars, Amadou Sawadogo, 18 ans, préparait une parcelle de forêt pour une plantation de cacao près du village de Blolequin, près de la frontière libérienne.

Il a déclaré qu'il vivait au Burkina Faso et que, lorsqu'il avait 16 ans, il est venu en Côte d'Ivoire après «mon père. . . asked [me] venir chercher de l'argent ici.

Comme d’autres ici, il a déclaré qu’il était courant que des enfants burkinabés viennent accompagnés par des trafiquants pour travailler en Côte d’Ivoire et que les arrangements financiers soient bien connus. Une trentaine de jeunes Burkinabé travaillent autour de Blolequin, a-t-il déclaré. Les paiements des trafiquants aux parents dépendaient de l’âge de l’enfant. Pour un adolescent de 15 ans, les parents toucheraient environ 250 dollars. Une fois dans les fermes ivoiriennes, les garçons gagnent un peu d’argent, généralement moins d’un dollar par jour, a déclaré Sawadogo.

Rien de tout cela n'est légal en droit ivoirien.

La Côte d'Ivoire a également signé l'accord Harkin-Engel et a adopté des lois en 2010 et 2016 définissant le travail des enfants et fixant des sanctions pour son utilisation. Le comité gouvernemental ivoirien chargé des questions relatives au travail des enfants a également déclaré avoir pris d'autres mesures préventives: il a construit des écoles dans les zones rurales et réprimé les personnes impliquées dans la traite des enfants.

Le travail et le trafic d’enfants ont néanmoins prospéré en raison de l’incapacité du pays à faire respecter les lois. Comme l’ont indiqué des responsables du département d’État américain dans un rapport de 2018, la première unité de la police anti-traite est basée à Abidjan, la capitale du pays, à plusieurs heures des zones de production de cacao et dispose d’un budget annuel de 5 000 dollars.

Selon un rapport du département d'État, ce montant est "gravement insuffisant".

Dans un communiqué à la poste, le comité ivoirien de lutte contre le trafic et le travail des enfants, a déclaré que les 5 000 dollars par an n'étaient pas suffisants et que "le gouvernement ivoirien doit investir davantage dans ce domaine". Le pays a également été confronté à l'éruption de et des guerres civiles en 2002 et 2011.

Making matters more complex, some of the young migrant workers, legally the victims of child labor, say they’d like to stay. Though he had arrived only two years ago, Sawadogo said he was prepared to stay in Ivory Coast and had started clearing his own patch of forest for a cocoa farm. On his plot of land, Sawadogo had built a small shelter out of branches. It was big enough for one person to sleep in. He owned a couple of battered metal bowls and had some oil, which he’d use to fry bananas picked for lunch.

“I haven’t earned much money yet,” he said. “But here I’ve made a little money.”

‘Nobody needs chocolate’

After missing the 2010 deadline, the industry established a less ambitious goal — to get a 70 percent reduction in child labor — and to do so by 2020. That goal, too, is unlikely to be met, the industry has indicated, and there is still no plan for consumer labels.

Over the years since striking the deal with the chocolate industry, Harkin and Engel have issued statements that sometimes supported the industry’s evolving approach and other times laid out their hopes for more improvement.

Engel, now chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said policymakers have worked closely with the industry to make progress.

“The cocoa industry now makes serious investments in addressing child labor. We still have more work to do when it comes to this challenge,” he said.

Engel said the Foreign Affairs Committee is working on legislation to address child labor and supply chain issues and will likely hold a hearing later this year focused on the matter.

Harkin did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The problem, in part, according to some industry consultants, is that the companies have not done enough to fully investigate the depth of the problem.

The cocoa sector has sought “relatively little evidence relating to child slavery,” according to a report by Embode, a human rights agency, for Mondelez, a U.S. company that includes several chocolate brands, including Cadbury and Toblerone. There has been a “general lack . . . of sufficient attention” to the problem, the report stated.

In the last major survey to measure progress against the Harkin-Engel goals, a 2015 report for the U.S. Labor Department found that, based on interviews with about 12,000 people, the number of child laborers reported to have worked in West Africa the previous year had increased to 2.1 million from 1.8 million in the previous survey, completed in 2009.

McCoy, of the World Cocoa Foundation, said the results were “in many ways . . . disappointing,” especially given years of work on the issue. He did note some positive signs — of the Ivorian children working in cocoa, the percentage attending school had risen to 71 percent, up from 59 percent.

And, he noted, the companies have another program to combat child labor, one that now covers more than 200,000 West African farms.

The new system relies on hiring a local farmer to check other farms for child labor. If children are found working, the farmer is encouraged to send the children to school, and he or she is offered other badistance. The advantage, advocates say, is that the oversight comes from someone more like a social worker than a police officer.

In pilot programs, the new monitoring system reduced child labor by 30 percent over three years, but it’s still not clear how willing the companies are to extend the program to their entire cocoa supply. It can cost about $70 annually per farmer.

“If child labor is a priority, this is commercially sustainable,” said Nick Weatherill, executive director of the International Cocoa Initiative, which is developing the system.

Meanwhile, some experts note, what might be the most straightforward means of addressing child labor is scarcely mentioned: paying the farmers more for their cocoa. More money would give farmers enough to pay for their children’s school expenses; alleviating their poverty would make them less desperate.

Under the Fairtrade program, cocoa farmers receive an extra 10 percent or more of prices, but that is not enough to lift the typical Ivorian farmer out of poverty.

One small Dutch company, Tony’s Chocolonely, is paying an even bigger premium — about 40 percent more, in an attempt to provide a living wage. For a metric ton of cocoa beans that would normally fetch $1,300, Tony’s pays an extra $520, or about $1,820.

Asked how likely it might be for other companies to follow suit, Paul Schoenmakers, a Tony’s company executive, noted that many of the large chocolate brands may fear giving their competitors a price advantage by paying more. Schoenmakers said their premium cocoa price adds less than 10 percent to the cost of a typical chocolate bar.

“There’s no economic textbook or management book that thinks that [paying more] is a good idea,” he said.

The industry spokesman, McCoy, said he views the Tony’s Chocolonely effort as an experiment.

“Tony’s sources 7,000 tons of cocoa, which is a tiny amount. . . . How scalable is that approach?” McCoy said. “I think it’s an open question.”

But to Schoenmakers, it’s a simple matter. “Nobody needs chocolate,” he said. “It’s a gift to yourself or someone else. We think it’s absolute madness that for a gift that no one really needs, so many people suffer.”

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