The deadline has arrived for the chocolate industry.
JULY 1st 2008
The chocolate industry promised in 2001 to end the trafficking of children onto cocoa farms by July 1st 2008. They claim that they have done this but all they have actually done is gather some information about the exploitation of children from half the cocoa areas involved.
WHAT THEY HAVEN’T DONE IS END IT.
THE TRAFFICKING HASN’T BEEN STOPPED.
THE EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN IS STILL HAPPENING.
WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
STOP THE TRAFFIK collected over one and half million declarations from around the world and took them to the UNITED NATIONS. We know we can do something. That’s what STOP THE TRAFFIK is all about.
TOGETHER WE NOW NEED TO ‘TELL A MILLION’.
Many people in your local community still don’t know what is going on. How can we tell them that the deadline has arrived and that children are still suffering? We can use our local papers, local radio, and all the community newsletters, our blogs and facebook to tell a million.
On July 1st, people all across our town will be going out of their way to buy more chocolate—a chocoholic’s dream, but it will be fairly-traded chocolate. This is the best way and the only way to eat your chocolate slave free.
July 1st is a very important day around the world.
It’s the day when the chocolate industry promised to make sure that no children were being used as slaves on cocoa farms.
It’s the day when we could eat a bar of our favourite chocolate such as a Mars, Kit Kat or Dairy Milk knowing that no child has been used in the harvesting of the cocoa beans that went to make the chocolate we love to eat.
Sadly there will be no celebrations on July 1st.
Industry has failed to keep its original promises.
Today, children as young as 12 are still being used as slaves on cocoa plantations.
Here are the words of one child after being rescued from a farm. “I will tell you how I lost my arm. I tried to escape, but I could not. They caught me and tied me to a papaya tree and they beat me and broke my arm. I used to dream horrible dreams that they were beating me and about many other things: the hard work, my family … I still have these dreams today”.
Although the majority of farmers would not treat children in this way, there are some who do, and there are an estimated 12,000 children trafficked onto cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast into a life of slavery.
In our community, thousands of people are buying chocolate without knowing that these children are suffering for our sweet tooth to make fat profits for an industry that hasn’t delivered on its promises. In 2001 they said they would certify that farms were slave free. Now they are saying that they are gathering data on some of the areas where cocoa is harvested.
This is not what they promised.
This is not good enough after 7 years of waiting for the freedom, safety and protection of these children.
We have to choose which chocolate bar to buy, at little cost to us when our chocolate is costing some children their lives.
