Chocolate in the Ivory Coast

In countries like Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, and Mali children are sent away from their families to cocoa farms in exchange for promised money and other useful items for their family. Families will “send their children to work”, or basically sell, them for promised goods that are usually never received. Even though it is not slavery, there are still many moral problems with the cocoa farming. The children work long hours, in dangerous conditions, for usually nothing more than a bed to sleep in and minimal food to eat.

Children from these poor countries are sent to The Ivory Coast in search of skills that will help them in life or help their family, but most of the time they are just taken advantage of. Cocoa farming in The Ivory coast is morally and ethically wrong because the children are taken advantage of and they are forced into a type of “slavery” The children that are taken from countries like Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, and Mali are severely taken advantage of for many reasons.

First of all, they are promised goods in exchange for their service that most of the time are not delivered or provided. Most of the time these services are just ploys to take these children into “slavery”. Most children go to work at the farms under the impression that they will learn skills or jobs that they can use to help their family. Most of the time the only skill they learn is how to pick and cut open cocoa beans.

As well as being taken advantage of, the children are also forced into hard work that is only slightly different from slave labor. The hours are horribly long, and they rarely get breaks so they basically work all day. The conditions are dangerous, as the children are using sharp machetes in dense fields, and can often cut themselves or other workers. They are not paid, but work only for a bed to sleep in and a small amount of food.

It is also seldom to find children that leave the farms because they do not know where to go or what to do. The small food and bed they get is better than starving on the streets for many of them. To conclude, the process of using child labor to farm cocoa in the ivory coast is a very labor intensive and dangerous process that children should not be doing. Families send their children to work at the farms and most of the time the children do not leave. This process violates several moral and ethical standards, and needs to be changed.