A young worker dries cocoa beans on a plantation in Ghana. Gates Foundation/Flickr. Creative Commons.Child exploitation in the West African cocoa industry has long captivated public attention. The news that cocoa, a key ingredient in chocolate, was being produced using child labour or even child slavery shocked European and North American consumers when the allegations first emerged in the press over fifteen years ago. The media accounts presented hellish scenarios of children working long hours for little or no pay on sprawling cocoa plantations. There, we were told, they risked beatings, extreme hunger or even death. Many of the accounts made disturbing links between the producers and consumers of chocolate. "People who are drinking cocoa or coffee are drinking their blood”, said the director of the Save the Children Fund in Mali to the BBC in 2001. “It is the blood of young children carrying 6kg of cocoa sacks so heavy that they have wounds all over their shoulders”.
Unfortunately, and confusingly for the audiences of these reports, key terms and statistics were often misused. No distinction was made, for example, between child slavery and child labour, let alone different types of child labour. The term ‘plantation’ was often used to denote what were actually small family plots of land, thus erroneously implying a type of large-scale commercial exploitation. Moreover, hugely variable statistics with no supporting evidence abounded. Initial reports that 90 percent of cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire relied on child slavery were subsequently revised to less than 2 percent. It also emerged that some stories were fabricated. For example, Michael Finkel, a former writer for the New York Times Magazine, was forced to admit that his article on child slavery in Côte d’Ivoire was "a deceptive blend of fact and fiction".
For many, a discussion of the details of the case may seem irrelevant. Does it matter if child slavery occurs on 90 percent or 2 percent of cocoa farms in Côte d'Ivoire? Surely any child slavery needs to be eradicated. And why does the terminology matter? We just need to rescue the kids, right? I do not wish to rewrite the stories of these children—whatever they are—in complex academic jargon; clearly their best interests are not served by complicating the issues unnecessarily. However, it is important to acknowledge that the best interests of these children are also not well served by making the issues appear simpler than they actually are. After fifteen years of media reports, company shaming, interventions, investments, and every possible awareness-raising initiative, the problem of child exploitation in West Africa cocoa is still said to persist. This suggests that there is clearly a need for different, critical and innovative thinking.
