Ivorians Address Cocoa-Slavery Link

May 4 -- A piece of chocolate might be a little slice of heaven for those of us living in the developed world — but some people contend the sweet comes from a world of misery.

Beatings, slavery and terror are some of the things that contribute to the production of chocolate, activists say.

More than 90 percent of cocoa from Ivory Coast — the world's biggest producer of cocoa — is procured with the help of child labor, according to Slavery, a documentary broadcast on Britain's Channel 4 last year.

Today, a senior delegation from the West African nation arrived in London to address the allegations. The Ivorians say the use of child labor is linked to the low price of cocoa, and their prime minister said cocoa would have to rise almost 10 times in price for the slavery problem to disappear.

The Low-Price Connection

Cocoa prices are at a 10-year low, caused by deregulation of the market and overproduction. And that, some say, has led to slavery.

Traditionally, farmers in Ivory Coast have used young men and boys from Mali as laborers, contracting them for the farming season and paying them after the crop is sold.

But other farmers, unable to turn a profit in recent years, have refused to pay their laborers, and instead kept them working without pay through beatings, intimidation and threats of magical spells, say activists like the United Kingdon's Fairtrade Foundation.

Other young men have been lured to the plantations with false promises of well-paid work, only to wind up being bought and sold in open markets, according to Slavery.

Ivory Coast's prime minister, Pascal Affi N'Guessan, has blamed multinationals for the problem of child trafficking in Africa. He says they have encouraged more and more developing countries to grow cocoa, forcing down the price.

Inaccurate Reports?

But chocolate trade groups, like the London-based Biscuit, Cake, Chocolate and Confectionary Alliance, as well as the Ivorian government, say that reports of slavery in the cocoa trade are exaggerated and not representative of conditions on most plantations.