Chocolate Slaves: The Real Cost of Your Chocolate Bar

Who doesn't love chocolate? It seems irresistible: the rich, luxurious, sweet cocoa treat can be in some cases addicting. Chocolate is often imported and shipped thousands of miles around the world to land neatly on your local supermarket shelf, waiting for a hungry customer to pick it up and drop it in their shopping basket. But for those of you who don't know, or who have never bothered to find out, where chocolate really comes from, it could be quite a shock.



Cocoa beans are the main component of chocolate, and are harvested in many different tropical areas of the world, like Africa and the Caribbean. The West African country of Cote d'Ivoire, also known as Ivory Coast, is the largest producer of cocoa beans in the world. Ivory Coast alone provides over 43% of the world's cocoa beans, a big number for a small country. While the farmers are doing well, with mass buyers like Nestle and Hershey's, their method of harvesting and producing the cocoa beans is appalling.

Every year, an estimated 200,000 boys between the ages of twelve and sixteen are tricked and lured from neighboring African countries onto Ivory Coast, with false promises of high payment and luxurious gifts. Once they arrive, however, they are being forced to work as slaves under farm owners. These boys receive no pay and are forced to work from dawn till dusk carrying and hauling sacks of cocoa beans on the farms, and receive beatings when they fall or lag in their work. It is truly a horrifying experience, and the fact that these beans are made to produce the sweet snack we all love to eat is almost comical.

There are an estimated 60,000 cocoa farms on Ivory Coast, and the number of slaves working on them grows every day. A freed slave by the name of Aly Diabate told reporters, “Anytime they loaded you with bags of cocoa beans and you fell while carrying them, nobody helped you. Instead they beat you and beat you until you picked it up again.” Aly Diabate was freed from the farm he worked on for eighteen months when a fellow slave managed to escape and alert the authorities. The farmer was arrested and Aly received $180 for his unpaid and torturous work. Unfortunately, there are many other cocoa farms on Ivory Coast where children are living undignified and downtrodden lives, to say the very least. Though Aly was returned to and lives with his family now, the psychological and physical scars still remain.