Chocolate, slavery, forced labour, child labour and the state

Abstract

The objective in this chapter is to review the history of slave labour in the cocoa industry, including forced labour and unpaid child labour, to illustrate how governments often collaborate with the cocoa industry to create and perpetuate these abuses. Slavery in the cocoa industray is a serious form of food crime affecting husdreds of thousands of workers in the cocoa industry. The chapter traces the history of slavery in the cocoa industry from the arrival of Europeans in the Americas in the late fifteenth century to its contemporary forms in West Africa. It illustrates the often explicit but somemtimes passive complicity of governments in creating and protecting the slave trade in the name of protecting both private commericial interests as well as the interests of the State. Some of the proposed solutions to ending the slave trade in the cocoa industry are also discussed.