The child labor crisis in the cocoa farming industry on the Ivory Coast is coming to a head. On February 12, 2021, the International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) filed a complaint accusing seven major chocolate companies of child slavery on behalf of a group of former child slaves forced to work on cocoa plantations. A litigation organization founded in the late 1980s, IRAdvocates focus on human rights violation claims against US corporations abroad. Named as defendants in the case are corporate giants Hershey, Mars, Nestle, Barry Callebaut, Cargill, Olam, and Mondelēz.

Forced child labor is far from a recent problem in the cocoa industry. “These companies have a long history of violating the law and participating in a venture in Cote D’Ivoire that relies upon child slaves to produce cheap cocoa,” wrote IRAdvocates in a press release for the lawsuit. Recent estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that over 1.5 million children are subjected to child labor in the the Ivory Coast and Ghana combined. And though intensive and concentrated farming of the crop spurred rapid economic growth within the area, the Ivory Coast is now almost wholly dependent on the cocoa industry, creating a one-crop economy that is highly vulnerable to price changes in the global market. 

In the lawsuit, IRAdvocates points out that in signing the Harkin-Engel Protocol in 2001, the area’s dominant chocolate companies promised to stop their use of child labor and halt trade agreements with plantations that were using child slave labor. But the situation has only gotten worse for children since the date of signing. A study by the University of Chicago found that use of child labor in Cote D’Ivoire increased 14 percent since 2015. Companies including Callebaut have changed their agreements to set a target for child labor eradication by 2025 — in essence, kicking the solution down the road. By pushing back the deliverable date of the agreement, it is evident that the companies are aware of their failure to live up to past agreements, and remain complacent about their current practices. 

There are existing systems that monitor child slave labor, including internal monitoring, farm inspections, and third party certification, but they are not reliable or effective. To override bias from internal reporting, third parties are now involved. They conduct random farm inspections as well as ethical labor certifications, but often prove unreliable or biased in favor of the companies. Nonprofit groups in the area such as Utz, Fairtrade, and Rainforest Alliance provide labels ensuring ethical labor, and chocolate corporate giants have pledged to buy from them. But though this outside certification process has made small strides in easing the issue, the strides are not large enough. 

Human rights violations of this kind often coincide with environmental externalities, or social and ecological harm. In the Ivory Coast, those externalities include deforestation and the establishment of monocultures — the often damaging practice of cultivating a single crop in one area — in the service of greater cocoa yield. In the Ivory Coast, a power struggle between protectors of the lush forests and stakeholders in the chocolate industry has been ongoing ever since large cocoa farmers began overtaking the area in the 1960s. As Amourlaye Toure of Mighty Earth, a global advocacy organization, notes: “90 percent of our primary forests in Ivory Coast have been lost between 1960, when we gained independence, until 2000.” In an era of corporate-led globalization, both environmental harms and the use of child labor are incentivized within  the current world capitalist system, which prioritizes profits over people and the planet. 

So, will the lawsuit succeed? The defendant companies believe they are protected under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789. This act originally allowed foreign nationals to pursue civil action on US soil for any breach of international law or US treaties, but its applicability has since been limited by the Supreme Court. It generally cannot be extended outside US borders and foreign corporations cannot be held liable under the act. Despite these limitations, federal courts have said that if more details of US involvement are brought to the case, the allegations against these multinational chocolate companies might have standing in US courts. Regardless of its success, Terry Collingsworth, Executive Director of IRAdvocates, believes that the lawsuit will put pressure on the offending corporations to cooperate in order to solve the problem of child trafficking and forced labor. Collinsworth would rather the companies not “spend millions in legal fees to fight an uncontestable fact – the cocoa industry is dependent upon child labor.”.

The abuse of power by large corporations and manufacturers within the capitalist system, exemplified by the chocolate industry’s practices in the Ivory Coast, unequivocally results in human rights violations and environmental injustices. Child slave labor in the Ivory Coast remains a pressing issue that demands immediate attention — this ongoing, global disregard of human rights by large corporations cannot be allowed to persist. And in a world where information is as globalized as our markets, no one can claim ignorance any longer.