Child Labor and Child Trafficking in the Ivory Coast

1100 Words5 Pages
Child Labor and Trafficking Through out history, slavery can be traced back to some of the earliest forms of human civilizations. Some examples would include: the Aztec Empire and Ancient Egypt. In matter of fact, the practice of slavery and human trafficking was so ordinary at one point, people used to accept it as a fact of life. [1] Although the trading of a human is wrong, Africans later began to sell their own children. This was done in order to receive money. It is said to be that a child can be bought for 230 Euros. These children that are sold to work on these cocoa plantations are required to work in terrible working conditions along with receiving extreme abuse from their “owners.” The Ivory Coast in West Africa is the top exporter of cocoa beans. “West African countries supply more than 70% of the world’s coca market.”[2] Yes, leading chocolate companies are aware of the existence of slave trade, trafficking and child labor, but they tend to deny anything that arises about these problems. Without a doubt there has been debates about what goes on, on these plantations. Finding an appropriate and effective solution will be a challenging task. While we still search for an efficient answer, child trafficking will remain a serious concern for many people living in Africa. The production of chocolate isn’t as delightful as consuming it. The matter of fact is that today much of the Chocolate that we consume is the result of child labor (a form of present day slavery). Traffickers take them from their homes and moved to plantations where they are forced to work. Child trafficking is when children are taken out of their native environments and are un- willingly brought to work somewhere, in this case cocoa plantations. These traffickers take innocent children for their vulnerability and for their use of exploitation. These adolescences work day and night

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