What Is the Child Slavery Problem in the Cocoa Industry?

The cocoa industry has a documented child labor and trafficking problem that has persisted despite two decades of corporate promises to fix it. According to Slave Free Chocolate, the U.S. Department of Labor announced in December 2020 that 1.6 million children were working illegally, and a percentage of those children had been trafficked and held as slaves. The children are vulnerable to brutal labor practices, including trafficking and slavery itself.

The Scale of the Problem

The U.S. Department of Labor figure cited by Slave Free Chocolate — 1.6 million children working illegally as of December 2020 — is the core number behind the issue. A portion of those children are not just working; they have been trafficked into the cocoa supply chain and held in slavery-like conditions.

This is not a marginal or hidden corner of the industry. Cocoa is the base ingredient for chocolate, and the candy industry built on it is worth roughly US $100 billion, according to the site. The gap between that revenue and the poverty of the farmers at the bottom is central to why the problem persists.

Who Is Named

Slave Free Chocolate lists major companies that it says have admitted accountability and promised to remedy the situation:

• Mars
• Nestlé
• Hershey
• Cargill
• Cadbury
• Mondelēz
• Barry Callebaut

The list is described as "including but not limited to" these names, meaning the site does not treat it as exhaustive.

The 20-Year Timeline

The most striking element of the site's account is the timeline. Companies reached an agreement to address the problem, and 20 years have passed since then. In that time, according to Slave Free Chocolate, the number of exploited children has only increased rather than fallen.

That gap between commitment and outcome is the reason the site argues the companies profiting from the system are the ones who have to fix it — and that a starting point is paying significantly more for the beans they buy. The site's reasoning: when a farmer makes less than $2.00, they cannot afford to hire adult labor, which pushes the work onto children.

A Related Consequence: Deforestation

The site also links the poverty of cocoa farmers to deforestation of sensitive and important national forests. The logic is that farmers forced into abject poverty expand into protected forest land to grow more cocoa, making environmental damage a downstream effect of the same economic problem.

A Recent Legal Development

Slave Free Chocolate highlights a December 20, 2023 case brought against Cargill in Washington D.C. Superior Court, alleging the company used exploitative child labor on cocoa farms in Ghana. The case was brought by International Rights Advocates on behalf of child plaintiffs in Ghana. A CBS News investigation that followed up on the allegations found children as young as 5 years old who appeared to be working in the cocoa industry.

What the Site Points Toward

Slave Free Chocolate's response to the problem is an "Ethical List" of chocolate companies it considers to be going further than the rest — companies that, in the site's framing, deserve business because they are "slave-free the whole way through." It also promotes awareness efforts such as Reverse Trick-or-Treating, where a small note is attached to each piece of candy given out so people can educate themselves on the issue.

The core takeaway from the site's account: the problem is measured in over a million children, the named companies span most of the major chocolate brands, two decades of promised remedies have not reduced the numbers, and the site's proposed lever is economic — pay farmers enough that they are not dependent on child labor.