Chocolate the Bitter Truth

Chocolate the bitter truth

BBC Panorama reporter Paul Kenyon posed as a coco dealer in West Africa to find child laborers.

The children in West Africa do not have a childhood, because they spend their whole day working and trafficking cocoa. The climatic condition for cocoas is only found in jungles just 10 degrees by the side of the equator like Ghana and Ivory Coast. Together both produce 60 percent of the world’s cocoa. In Ghana and Ivory Coast, more than 10 million people depend on cocoa. The favorite destination for traffickers to sell to children is Ghana. Ghana is the second largest producer of cocoa and Ivory Coast is the world biggest supplier of cocoa. Furthermore, the trafficked children are working as slaves.

One of the children, hinted that there are some kids from another country that are not going to school and that nobody play with them and even nobody talks to them because they are there to work. Children have been trafficked and not paid. The kids are being sold by their own family member who is paid for doing this, while the child who is doing all the work does not get a dime. The mother often knows about this but doesn’t seem to have any other solution, because they are very poor. They have in mind that their children are better off where they are and that they get food to eat. Little do they know that their children go days without eating and don't go to school or get paid. The ILO (International Labor Organization) prohibits the worst forms of child labor