http://www.kusi.com/story/14029430/biBitter Chocolate Fallout
On this Valentines Day, a chocolate heart or some creamy chocolate truffles can say "I Love You", but they can also remind us of a human injustice halfway around the world.
On the west coast of Africa, there is a tiny nation called Ivory Coast which is the world's biggest producer of cocoa. The beans grown and picked there make up 80 percent of the worlds cocoa used to make the chocolate we love so much. The problem is, according to human rights activists, most of the cocoa beans are picked by children under the age of 15 and they make so little, if anything, that most consider it slavery. According to UNICEF, nearly a third of the children in Ivory Coast are forced to work in the fields or the processing facilities.
This kind of forced child labor, according to the national children's relief agency, leads to trafficking in children. It says it has reports of children being kidnapped in neighboring countries and taken to Ivory Coast to work. One report says the lucky ones make the equivalent of 80 cents a week to do hard labor and carry 50 pound bags of cocoa beans until their tiny shoulders give out.
It takes 400 beans to make one pound of chocolate. To get those beans the children cut down the pods, slice them open, scrape out the beans and put them in baskets or bags and they carry them out of the fields. When they get to rest, they get lunch which is corn paste and bananas. When they must work again, some say they are beaten to motivate them.
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