Nestle uses child slave labour to make its chocolate products
Nestle uses child slave labour to make its chocolate products
In Western Africa, cocoa is a commodity crop grown primarily for export. Cocoa is the Ivory Coast’s primary export which makes up about half of the country’s agricultural exports in volume. It was originally brought to Western Africa by European chocolate companies seeking to grow it where labour was cheap or free, and that colonial legacy exists in the chocolate industry today. As the chocolate industry has grown over the years, so has the demand for cheap cocoa. Most cocoa farmers earn less than $1 per day, an income below the extreme poverty line. As a result, they often resort to the use of child labour to keep their prices competitive. In many cases, this includes what the International Labour Organization (ILO) calls “the worst forms of child labour.” These are defined as practices “likely to harm the health, safety, or morals of children.” Approximately 2.1 million children ranging from 5-15 years old in the Ivory Coast and Ghana work on cocoa farms, most of whom are likely exposed to the worst forms of child labour.
Around 30% of children labouring on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast do not attend school, which violates the ILO’s Child Labour Standards. Depriving these children of an education has many short-term and long-term effects. Without an education, the children of the cocoa farms have little hope of ever breaking the cycle of poverty.
In 2015 the Ivory Coast passed laws requiring children attend school until age 16 and making it illegal for children under 16 to work, but this has had little impact on children trafficked onto cocoa farms.
The Washington Post investigated into trafficking and exploitation of these children. They met with a young labourer, Abou Traore, and asked about his age.
“Nineteen,” Abou Traore says. But when the farmer overseeing him is distracted, Abou writes a different answer in the sand: 15. Eventually, he says that he’s been working the cocoa farms in Ivory Coast since he was 10.
The chocolate industry makes about $103 billion a year in sales. It is through the industry’s exploitation of cocoa farmers that these corporations are able to make such a profit.
But what is Nestles involvement with this?
Let’s run the numbers:
Tony's Chocolonely- an ethical chocolate manufacturer which was set up as a protest against child exploitation in the cocoa industry.
They reported a net revenue of €200.1 million which would equate to £175,887,900 for the financial year ending September 30, 2024, reflecting a 33.2% year-on-year growth.
Whereas Nestlé's annual revenue from its chocolate segment is approximately 6.6 billion Swiss francs in 2024. Which would be roughly £6,229,080,000 today.
I think it’s clear to see where corporate greed feeds into this. Including the fact that in 2024 it was reported that Nestles other revenue sources amounted to €76,727,910,000 in total.
It’s obvious to me that Nestle can spare a couple of pounds for ethical chocolate.
If Tony’s Chocolonely can do it, then I hate to think what Nestle’s excuse is.
As one of the world’s largest chocolate manufacture, Nestlé can trace be tracked back to 49 percent of its global cocoa supply to these child labour farms. This is how Nestle is involved in this. The Nestle that owns over 2,000 brands such as our much-loved KitKats, sits quietly on our supermarket shelves and consumers pick it up without so much as a single thought about where it may have come from and what it took to bring that product to us.
But we had a glimmer of hope to end this. Six men from Mali said they were enslaved as children on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire. They sued Nestlé USA and Cargill in the United States, saying the companies helped (or aided and abetted) the use of child slavery because they bought cocoa from farms that used child slave labour.
They brought the case under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) — a U.S. law that lets foreign citizens sue in U.S. courts for serious violations of international law, like slavery.
In the District Court, the case was dismissed. The judge said that corporations can’t be sued under the ATS. The plaintiffs didn’t show enough facts to prove the company’s helped slavery.
In the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the court disagreed with the district court and reversed the decision. They said companies can be held responsible for aiding and abetting slavery because slavery is a universal and absolute violation of international law.
But the court did not decide whether the case was trying to apply the ATS outside the U.S., which is usually not allowed after a previous Supreme Court case called Kiobel.
Therefore, it went back to the District Court, and the case was dismissed again, this time because the court said the claims focused on activities that happened outside the U.S., which the ATS doesn’t cover.
What the Supreme Court decided, in an 8–1 decision, was:
The plaintiffs were improperly trying to apply U.S. law to events that happened overseas (extraterritorial application), which isn’t allowed under the ATS. The important actions by the companies — like providing money, training, and supplies — all happened in Côte d’Ivoire, not in the U.S. Simply being a U.S. company is not enough to let the ATS apply. So, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit and sent the case back (meaning the plaintiffs’ claim could not go forward under the ATS).
Justice Alito disagreed and wrote the only dissenting opinion.
This case, I found was truly heart-breaking. It seems to me that morals have no place in a courtroom and that we must reluctantly follow the black and white lettering of the law. In 2001, Nestle pledged to eliminate forced labour from their supply chain, but in 2019, Nestle admitted it could not guarantee their chocolate was free from child labour.
The vicious cycle continues.
Daya Sangha
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_USA,_Inc._v._Doe
https://www.ft.com/content/43934be9-8e30-4555-ab89-d6fdf0faace2
https://www.nestle.com/investors/annual-report/facts-figures
https://foodispower.org/human-labor-slavery/slavery-in-the-chocolate-industry/
https://www.fordhamilj.org/iljonline/2021/2/7/modern-day-slavery-nestl-and-cocoa-plantations
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57522186
https://www.humanium.org/en/the-dark-side-of-chocolate-child-labour-in-the-cocoa-industry/
