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In "Chocolate's Child Slaves," CNN's David McKenzie travels into the heart of the Ivory Coast to investigate what's happening to children working in the cocoa fields. Premieres Friday January 20, 8 p.m. GMT, 9 CET on CNN International. More information and air times It may be unthinkable that the chocolate we enjoy could come from the hands of children working as slaves. In the Ivory Coast and other cocoa-producing countries, there are an estimated 100,000 children working the fields, many against their will, to create the chocolate delicacies enjoyed around the world. In an upcoming documentary, "Chocolate's Child Slaves," CNN's David McKenzie travels into the heart of the Ivory Coast – the world’s largest cocoa producer – to investigate what’s happening to children working in the fields, 10 years after the protocol was signed. The CNN Freedom Project examined in September 2011 what effect this protocol has had over the years and also what some of the major issues are surrounding slave labor and the cocoa industry. Here's some of the background of that coverage on the Freedom Project blog. |
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Why are we as a Western world really suprised?
Here's more detailed information on chocolate slavery.
http://web.archive.org/web/20101120203551/http://chocolatework.com/chocolate-slavery.htm
This is terrible! Great article worth reading and giving serious consideration to!
Very distressing to see the film reporting on cocoa responding that children were helping parent sharecroppers prepare the cocoa when the fillm was showing the family pictured taking seeds from palm oil bunches. Surely the photographer, or the film editor or whoever saw the film should have recognized that the crop was not cocoa-although one grown in the same areas .It only gives people who want to discount reporting on this very serious issue ammunition to say that the reporters and CNN are 'missing things' and not reporting accurately.
It also suggests that the people who see the films can be shown anything and will believe it. I have lived in the cocoa/oil palm areas of West Africa and I find it hard that the mistake could be made. Oil palm trees are palm trees, cocoa trees aren't. Cocoa seeds are reddish brown and come covered in a moist film, out of a pod roughly the size of two fists. Oil palm seeds are red, yellow and black and grow in large bunches of many seeds. Each bunch may weigh more than 25+ kilos. The seeds are about the same size, and cocoa pods and oil palm bunches are both cut from the trees to harvest. But no one could mistake one for the other. If this mistake or carelessness means the program is less effective it will be devastating as the abuse of children by subjecting them to this heartless labor needs to be addressed.
I'll bet things are even worse now. The big companies probably have put up a firewall but they know exactly what's going on.