Monday, April 30, 2007

Where did all the chocolate come from?



Where did all the chocolate come from?

Nearly half the world's chocolate is made from cocoa grown in the Cote D'Ivoire, in Africa.
12,000 children have been trafficked into cocoa farms in Cote D'Ivoire

When we buy chocolate we are being forced to be oppressors ourselves as we have no guarantee that the chocolate we eat is 'traffik free'

Traffik Free Guarantee

We want all chocolate companies to be able to stamp onto their chocolate wrappers a guarantee that the cocoa beans have not been harvested by trafficked labour. We can then choose to eat chocolate with a Traffik Free Guarantee.

Diabate and TraorĂ© had left their village in Mali to go to Ivory Coast looking for enough money to afford a bicycle, but they were sold to a man who had paid 50,000 West African Francs (about £50) for the two boys and he wanted the money back—in labour. The boys from Sirkasso met about twenty others in the same predicament and learned that no one was ever paid. They slept in a rectangle-shaped mud hut that initially had windows but when some boys found they could escape during the night, the windows were sealed shut. Diabate and TraorĂ© remember eating mostly bananas, though they would gobble up the cocoa beans, as others did, whenever they got the chance. Many months passed, and the boys forgot what the purpose had once been for this adventure. Life became a struggle to exist, then hardened to despair.

They gave up thinking of escape. They were under constant threat of beatings if they were caught trying to flee—and they had seen several boys treated savagely—they were actually spooked by a belief that they were under a spell. Read more in Carol Off's book "Bitter Chocolate". - stopthetraffik.org

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