Chocolate, Child Labour and Child Sex Trafficking

By Adam Valvasori - Values Manager.

Image via: www.checkoutfairtrade.org.nz
The farmers in Kuapa Kokoo are proud of the cocoa and their motto is ‘pa paa paa’ which means the ‘best of the best’ in Twi, the local language.

Starting in August 2009 The Body Shop’s global campaign will be ending child trafficking.

According to World Vision, almost every country, including Australia, is implicated in the shocking trade in human lives - either as a place of recruitment, transit or the destination for trafficked people.

The victims of trafficking are sometimes tricked and lured by false promises or physically forced into horrendous situations. Many are trafficked into bonded labour and made to work as virtual slaves to pay off a family debt. Countless women and children are trafficked into the commercial sex industry to work as prostitutes.

What's The Body Shop doing about child trafficking?

1. The Body Shop’s strong commitment to human rights means all our suppliers must verify they don’t use child labour.
   
   
2. We will be launching a campaign in August with Child Wise, Australia’s leading child protection agency, to eliminate the especially heinous crime of child sex trafficking.
   
   
3. About 70% of the chocolate we eat comes from cocoa beans farmed in West Africa. Sadly, thousands of children are being trafficked and forced into labouring on these cocoa farms. Since 1996 we’ve been supporting a fair and ethical alternative, by buying Community Trade cocoa beans from Kuapa Kokoo Ltd Cooperative in Ghana. The Body Shop uses cocoa in many products, including our famous body butters. We pay a fair price as well as a social premium, so farmers can afford to send their children to school and not to work.
   
   
4. We encourage all our staff to purchase fair trade coffee, tea and chocolate and participate in World Vision's Don't Trade Lives campaign. Many do and go so far as to outlaw "slave bars" from their store's back room.
   

What can you do to fight child trafficking?

1. We all eat chocolate and drink tea or coffee. Buy products with the fair trade label and you can rest assured that no child labour was used in making the product.
   
   
2. Contact your favourite chocolate manufacturer and ask them to adopt World Vision Australia’s recommendations to end child labour in the production of the cocoa they buy.
   
   
3. Watch and promote through your circles of influence, the new child trafficking videos I've embeded below from World Vision. Bubbles of Nothing is about the real cost of chocolate. I love it! It's cheeky, original and very effective at getting the message across! Postcard from Narak, Cambodia gives us the opportunitiy to see the issue of child trafficking from the front line. Narak's story touches on the issues of unemployment, poverty, land mines, domestic violence and trafficking but also shows you the positive impact you, via NGOs working in developing countries, can make.
   

Bubbles of Nothing


Postcard from Narak, Cambodia