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In 2002, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture investigated the prevalence of child labor in the cocoa industry.[2] They found 284,000 children working in hazardous conditions in West Africa.[2] Of this, 153,000 children applied pesticides without protective equipment, others picked pods and opened them to get the beans; 64% of the children were younger than 14 and 40% of the children were girls.[2] Children often began working at 6 am, worked 12-hour days and were beaten regularly.
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In 1998, UNICEF reported that Ivorian farmers used enslaved children—many from surrounding countries.[20] A 2000 BBC documentary described child slavery on commercial cocoa farms in Côte d'Ivoire.[2][21] In 2001, the US State Department estimated there were 15,000 child slaves in cocoa, cotton, and coffee farms in Côte d'Ivoire,[22] and the Chocolate Manufacturers Association acknowledged that child slavery is used in the cocoa harvest.[22]
Malian migrants have long worked on cocoa farms in Côte d'Ivoire,[23] but in 2000 cocoa prices had dropped to a 10-year low and some farmers stopped paying their employees.[23] The Malian counsel had to rescue some boys who had not been paid for five years and who were beaten if they tried to run away.[23] Malian officials believed that 15,000 children, some as young as 11 years old, were working in Côte d'Ivoire in 2001.[19] These children were often from poor families or the slums and were sold for "just a few dollars" to work in other countries.[19] Parents were told the children would find work and send money home, but once the children left home, they often worked in conditions resembling slavery.[2] In other cases, children begging for food were lured from bus stations and sold as slaves.[24]
In 2002, Côte d'Ivoire had 12,000 children with no relatives nearby, which suggested they were trafficked,[2] likely from neighboring Mali, Burkina Faso and Togo.[25] According to a 2009 snowball sampling study, the majority of those with childhood cocoa labor experience were trafficked (75% from Burkina Faso and 63% from Mali).[26] The majority of those who were trafficked had no interaction with police, and 0.5 percent had any contact from institutions that provided social services.[27] Western African nations of Cameroon,[28] Côte d'Ivoire,[29] Ghana[30] and Mali[31] are the 2009 US State Department's Tier 2 Watch List for human trafficking in part due to the trafficking of children in cocoa production. Burkina Faso[32] and Togo[33] are rated at Tier 2 in part due to trafficking for cocoa production.
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In 2001, due to pressure applied by the US Congress and potential US and UK boycotts,[2] the chocolate manufacturers promised to start eliminating forced child labor.[18] In 2012, Ferrero and Mars promised that they will end cocoa slavery by 2020.[34][35][36]
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