labor15

Chocolate is to Die For

America has been trained to think that the evil of slavery has finally been
abolished and cleansed from society. However this is only what American’s want
to believe. Child slaver labor is a very real and threatening problem in the
world, especially emerging third world countries. One culprit behind this is
the main ingredient in chocolate, cocoa.
Cocoa is a great economic market. The United States imported over
627,000 tons of cocoa in the year 2000. This resulted in a $13 billion market and
this market flourished with the Americans insatiable cravings for chocolate. The
main driver behind this market was cocoa’s extremely low cost. In 1977, the price
rose to a high of $4.89 per pound. Today, it is at 51cents per pound. With the
downfall of the price for cocoa, the farmers were forced to result to slavery to
keep their business profitable.
http://www.stopchildlabor.org/internationalchildlabor/facts.htm
Child slave labor for cocoa is most prevalent in the Ivory Coast. This is
mainly because the Ivory Coast is the greatest supplier of the word’s cocoa
beans. It provides 43% of the world’s cocoa beans. This high demand shows in
the country; there are over 600,000 cocoa bean farms. Children are suffering
from this. Over 70 percent of Ivorian children leave school at the age of 12 or
13 to go work in the cocoa industry. This takes away the youth’s chances at
obtaining a proper education and staying away from the dangers of working in the
cocoa fields.
http://www.stopchildlabor.org/internationalchildlabor/chocolate.htm
The risks of working in the cocoa fields are very high. A child working in the
fields may become a slave at any moment. The owners of these fields are forced
to use slavery because of the high demand on cocoa and its extremely low market
price. In other words these owners are ruthless in their techniques to maintain
a profitable income. The children are treated like slaves and many of them try
to escape. However the success rate of a child escaping is very low, and the
chance that they will be beaten when returning to their farm is very high. In
some extreme incidences the children are beaten so horrendously that they can
be
fatally wounded and even die. This is a cause for attention. This should be a
wakeup call to the entire world yet very little is being done. The biggest
thing is that it is the youth that is being enslaved; they are the future of the
country and if the Ivory Coast would like to prosper in the future then