The solution -- crafted in October 2001 by the biggest chocolate companies in the world, in negotiation with Harkin and Engel -- was a document called the Harkin-Engel Protocol. The companies that signed the protocol -- Hershey's and M&M/Mars, among others -- promised to follow through on a four-year, six-point plan. The companies' stated goal was to rid the industry of child slavery by July 2005, at which time their products would be certified as "slave free." To work toward that goal, the companies committed themselves to instituting programs in West Africa to improve the lives of cocoa farmers and make them aware of the consequences of child labor -- not just trafficking in children, but also keeping their own kids home from school to work the farms. The "slave free" tag would be the payoff -- a signal to consumers that their candy bars and M&Ms could be consumed without guilt.

But halfway to the protocol deadline, little headway has been made. And critics of the chocolate industry say companies are attempting to control implementation of the initiative to make as little impact as possible on their own bottom line. Most importantly, say these critics, the chocolate companies are avoiding the crucial role of cocoa pricing in the perpetuation of child slavery. It is a subject that needs to be addressed, say child labor experts, but it is a threat to industry profits.

Two months after the protocol was signed, the Child Labor Coalition, comprising more than 70 advocacy groups focused on domestic and international child labor issues, released a statement acknowledging the industry's initiative but asking them to go a few steps further. The statement suggested that the industry commit to ending exploitative child labor practices on cocoa farms all over the world, not just in West Africa but also in Indonesia and Brazil, where anecdotal evidence suggests it exists. Susan Smith, a spokesperson for the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, acknowledges that the problem may exist elsewhere, but says, "There are only so many things we can do at a time."

The CLC's statement also asked the industry to consider ensuring "that family farmers get a fair price for their products and agricultural workers are compensated fairly for their labor." Smith says that the industry is addressing pricing, but through indirect avenues. "We're teaching the farmers about marketing their products to get more money," she says. "To produce more and a higher quality of cocoa and how to sell the cocoa, what buyers are looking for." Smith cites the Sustainable Tree Crops Program, which has been tested and is ready to be implemented. Among its goals is devising a way to get radio updates about the world market to isolated farmers so that they know how much they should get for their beans. Another goal is to improve the farmers' quality of life and the quality of the cocoa by introducing environmentally safe pest- and disease-control methods. "This all relates to the prices the farmers are getting," says Smith.

The industry's reluctance to deal with cocoa pricing directly was evident at a workshop held in early February in Washington, where the chocolate industry presented its findings to representatives from the International Labor Organization, the Department of Labor, USAID and UNICEF on why more than half the children working on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast have never attended school. Their conclusion -- that Ivory Coast farmers will always keep their children home to work the fields because it is a practice embedded in their culture -- contradicted years of research by child labor experts who identify poverty -- in this case, caused in part by low and unpredictable cocoa prices -- as the root of child labor and child slavery.

"There was a very selective use of data which seemed to bolster the view that poverty is not a major cause of the problem and that kids working on those farms are no worse off in terms of education," says Fyfe, who attended the meeting as a UNICEF representative. "It was very perverse."

A more balanced use of data, says Fyfe and others who have studied the causes of child labor, would have led directly to a discussion of cocoa pricing and, ideally, to a plan to regulate pricing. Such a plan would help farmers escape poverty and reduce the need to use children on their farms. Of the millions of dollars that the chocolate industry says it is investing in programs like the Sustainable Tree Crops Program to reeducate farmers in West Africa, very little trickles down to the cocoa farmers, say critics of the chocolate companies' handling of the child labor problem. Instead, the farmers remain at the mercy of a world market price for cocoa that fluctuates according to supply and demand, as well as weather and political instability.

At the time the Harkin-Engel Protocol was signed, cocoa prices were at an all-time low. The Ivory Coast's government-run board had been protecting the country's farmers since 1955 by setting a minimum price at which they'd export their product, but it was split and privatized in 1999.

Suddenly, farmers with no idea of the mechanics of free trade or world market prices or commodities brokers were left to fend for themselves. Working mostly in isolation on their small family farms spread throughout the country, the farmers did not, and still don't, have the means to confer among themselves about the prices they're getting for their cocoa. They operate at the mercy of pisteurs, or buyers, who drive out to the farms and give each farmer cash to haul away his cocoa beans. (The farmers are generally too poor to own trucks.) It's difficult to know how much cash exchanges hands at the farm gates, but Global Exchange, an internationally focused human rights organization based in San Francisco, estimates that the cocoa farmers make between $30 and $100 a year. Transfair USA, the only independent third-party certifier of Fair Trade practices in the United States, estimates that farmers earn about one cent for each 60-cent candy bar that's sold here.

The pisteurs are paid by exporters, multinational companies with offices in Ivory Coast port cities like Abidjan and San Pedro. Three U.S. companies -- Illinois-based Archer Daniels Midland, California-based Nestlé USA, and Minnesota-based Cargill -- are among the major exporters.

Since 70 percent of the population of the Ivory Coast is involved in cocoa farming, the fall of cocoa prices in 1999 and 2000 greatly increased rural poverty and led to the cutting of teachers' salaries, a reduction in government spending for healthcare, and, according to a report by the International Labor Rights Fund, to "the widespread use of cheap child labor."

Right now, because of civil unrest in the Ivory Coast, cocoa supply is down and cocoa prices are higher. But farmers have not benefited from the higher prices, since many are not even able to get their product to port. Watchdog groups like Global Exchange, Save the Children and the International Labor Rights Fund insist that without minimum pricing to ensure a steady income, farmers are not likely to make major changes in labor practices -- and pay -- on their farms.

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