There are some cocoa farmers, outside the Ivory Coast, who are guaranteed a minimum price for their cocoa -- they belong to Fair Trade Certified producer groups, or collectives made up of democratically managed farms. There are 20 collectives in eight countries -- Ghana, Cameroon, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Belize -- that represent more than 42,000 farmers and their families. Importers and chocolate makers who buy Fair Trade cocoa produced by these farmers sign a contract with the Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), based in Bonn, Germany, promising to document that they pay the co-op's farmers the Fair Trade price: the world market price plus a premium that guarantees a living wage and extra money to go back into the co-op community. The supply chain is designed to be transparent, with the FLO reserving the right to inspect documentation tracking the product from the farm to the manufacturer.

Fair Trade Certified chocolate was introduced to the U.S. last fall. The certified licensees, small companies like Dean's Beans, Ithaca Fine Chocolates, Day Chocolate and Cocoa Camino, produce only a tiny fraction of the amount of chocolate produced by major outfits like Hershey's and M&M/Mars. Other companies, such as Scharffen Berger Chocolate in San Francisco, choose not to buy from West Africa at all, since they believe that any cocoa from that part of the world is probably besmirched by the involvement of child labor. Producers of organic chocolate, sold by such U.S. companies as Newman's Own and Dagoba, is also "slave free," since organic farms are subject to their own independent monitoring system that checks labor practices.

The amount of cocoa purchased by companies signed on to pay the Fair Trade price for Fair Trade Certified cocoa is too small to make a dent in the amount of cocoa produced worldwide -- only three of the 89 million pounds of cocoa farmed by Fair Trade Certified collectives in 2000 could be sold at the Fair Trade price.

Global Exchange is trying to pressure M&M/Mars to commit to buying at least 5 percent of its cocoa beans from Fair Trade Certified collectives. (Part of the campaign enlists supporters to send valentines to the company asking them to "have a heart" and sell Fair Trade chocolate.) That would take care of the 85-plus million pounds of Fair Trade cocoa that could not be sold at Fair Trade prices in 2000, and probably more, since M&M/Mars imports hundreds of thousands of tons of cocoa each year. The organization, and other supporters of the Fair Trade strategy, acknowledge that a company that pays the Fair Trade price is likely to increase the price of its products, but they point to the increase in sales of Fair Trade coffee, which is more expensive than coffee without the Fair Trade label, as a sign of the potential success of Fair Trade chocolate. According to a report by the Fair Trade Federation, certified Fair Trade coffee imports in the U.S. grew more than 50 percent, from 4.3 million pounds in 2000 to 6.7 million pounds in 2001.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Chocolate makers, government groups like the Department of Labor, and a handful of non-government groups, including Free the Slaves, have held numerous meetings since the Harkin-Engel Protocol was signed. They've set up committees and subcommittees. They have the beginnings of a foundation, based in Geneva. But it is still unclear how much has been done to meet the commitments outlined in the protocol. Bill Guyton, executive director of the World Cocoa Foundation, has visited Africa frequently in the past few months to see farmers and government officials. "The farmers know about the issue," he says. "They want to know how they can work with us to overcome their problems." An office is being set up in Ghana as headquarters for a program, spearheaded by the ILO, that focuses on improving awareness among farmers of child labor issues. But none of the chocolate industry's proposed child labor projects have officially begun. Says Guyton, "The activities will be rolled out at different time periods."

For right now, at least, the civil war in the Ivory Coast that has been raging since September overshadows the child labor problem -- the issue of child soldiers is pressing as well. (It is believed that some of the child laborers are being "drafted" into military service.) But a plan for accomplishing the goals after the civil unrest is resolved appears elusive.

Fyfe, who attended the February meeting where the chocolate industry gave its briefing on the extent of child labor in West Africa, says there was very little connection between the ILO, the DOL, USAID and the other organizations whose representatives stood up, one after the other, to describe proposals for programs they want to implement. "I couldn't see what the mechanism was for who would take leadership in bringing all this together in some kind of coherent strategy," Fyfe says. "That was missing for me."

Ther Aung of the International Labor Rights Fund agrees. "It's all very vague," she says. The only definite objective appears to be the "slave free" labeling, set for July 2005. And that goal is a source of controversy among child labor experts. "Labeling is only as good as the monitoring," says Fyfe. Of the labeling systems he's studied -- including rugs produced in India and shoes produced in Brazil -- he's found the industries that self-police, as the chocolate companies have proposed, to be markedly less legitimate. (The scenario is at the root of the old joke in labor rights circles about "slave free" labels being stitched on by exploited child laborers.)

Even if the industry does have the best of intentions in labeling, Fyfe questions if it is a workable goal, considering that the cocoa farms are so small and spread out. "How will you be able to monitor a supply chain so fragmented over such a large scale?" he asks. "Even in traditional monitoring -- sending inspectors into factories -- they don't do a good job of that in the U.S., much less in the Ivory Coast, and that's the easiest kind of monitoring to do."

Anti-sweatshop activists have found that opening factories to inspectors as a means of monitoring is ineffective. "It's impossible because of the sheer number of factories around the world," says Jason Marks, a spokesperson for Global Exchange. The money is better spent, Marks says, on worker empowerment -- giving workers a living wage and allowing them the right to form trade unions. Worker empowerment is what makes Fair Trade collectives easy to monitor -- they're more invested in maintaining the criteria that a FLO inspector comes to check on once a year.

"Labeling is not the magic bullet," Fyfe agrees. "It's got to be seen as part of a much broader strategy. There are much more fundamental things that have to be done to deal with children being exploited at work -- poverty, education, good government, child protection laws, good public services." He and others are hoping that the industry will think about refocusing their efforts -- and multimillions -- into strategies that incorporate all of those factors.

Recent Stories