Chocolate-coated slavery
AN EFFORT to hold US chocolate companies responsible for child labour on farms supplying their cocoa went before the Supreme Court yesterday, as justices consider a case against Nestlé USA and Cargill brought by six Africans who say they were trafficked from Mali as children, forced to work long hours on Ivory Coast cocoa farms and kept at night in locked shacks.
Child labour is widespread on the cocoa farms of West Africa, where about two-thirds of the world’s cocoa is grown, and attorneys for the Malians argue that Nestlé and other chocolate companies should better monitor child labour on the farms.
These companies “have long supported and maintained a system of child slavery and forced labour in the Ivory Coast," according to the filings for the six Africans by Paul L Hoffman and other attorneys. “This is extremely profitable … They could end the system; instead they chose profits over ending their exploitation of children.”
Nestlé USA and Cargill responded in legal filings that they, too, deplore child slavery and trafficking, and that they have taken steps to eradicate such practices among their suppliers.
Nestlé USA “firmly believes that traffickers deserve punishment”, the company said in court filings. "This case is not about any of that."
The proliferation of global supply chains in recent decades has led to recurring legal debates over the responsibility of multinational companies to monitor the adherence of their farflung suppliers to human rights and environmental standards.
Business groups such as the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have pushed back against lawsuits, including the one against Nestlé and Cargill, arguing that they are burdensome and could discourage investment in developing economies. US and other foreign companies have been sued 150 times over the past 25 years under the same law.
Allowing such cases would impose “heavy legal and reputational burdens on companies that are sued on the basis that they conducted business with foreign actors accused of committing torts abroad”, their attorneys argued.
Moreover, in the view of the companies, such cases ought to be filed not against them, but against the traffickers and farmers involved. Furthermore, they say, the US courts are the wrong forum to consider the overseas abuses.
“This case is about a 15-year-old lawsuit brought against the wrong defendant, in the wrong place, and under the wrong statute,” according to the brief on behalf of Nestlé USA filed by Neal Katyal and other attorneys.
“The true wrongdoers are the Malian and Ivorian traffickers, farmers, and overseers.”
There is plenty of evidence, however, that the world's chocolate supply depends heavily on child labour, and that despite two decades of industry promises, it remains widespread. While much of it occurs on family farms, some is also arranged by traffickers who ferry in children from neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso.
A Washington Post investigation of the use of child labour in the cocoa industry found that representatives of some of the biggest and best-known brands could not guarantee that any of their chocolate was produced without child labour. It featured children from Burkina Faso working in appalling conditions on Ivory Coast cocoa farms.
According to a recent report sponsored by the US Department of Labor, the world's chocolate companies depend on cocoa produced with the aid of 1.6 million West African child labourers. Most of those labourers were involved in tasks considered hazardous, such as wielding machetes, carrying heavy loads or working with pesticides, according to the report.
While connecting any child labourer with a specific company is difficult to do, human rights advocates blame the industry in general.