Chocolate - Bittersweet

While my consumption of chocolate has diminished over the years and as I opt more for dark chocolate versus milk chocolate, I am still a huge chocolate lover. And the chocolate industry has billions of ardent fans. Think of the huge amounts of chocolate sold over Valentine's Day; and as Easter comes upon us, those chocolate eggs; and of course, who can forget Halloween? Chocolate is everywhere. Among us friends, it's a stress-reliever too and sometimes a sinful indulgence. But it slips my mind, quite often, that most things chocolate are made from cocoa. Reading a friend's blog and then doing a bit of searching myself, I was reminded of something I have read about in the past, and it makes me think twice about that bar of dark chocolate sitting on my kitchen counter....

A large part of the chocolate industry's cocoa comes from the Ivory Coast (or Cote d'Ivoire) on the continent of Africa. About 70% of the world's cocoa beans are in fact grown in that country. Some of those cocoa farmers employ children - children who are younger than 13. The situation is a conflicting one as these children, who would rather not be working and going to school instead, are sent out to the fields because of the poverty their families face. While US lawmakers and international human rights groups worked to eradicate this problem, it is far from being eradicated in the villages of the Ivory Coast.


Here is a link to a recent article summarizing a recent follow-up by US lawmakers. And here is the original article that I read on my friend's blog called "Chocolate's Bittersweet Economy". You should go to this article because you'll see all the pictures that accompanied the article....

Here's an excerpt from the article by Christian Parenti:
"Outside the village of Sinikosson in southwestern Ivory Coast, along a trail tracing the edge of a muddy fishpond, Madi Ouedraogo sits on the ground picking up cocoa pods in one hand, hacking them open with a machete in the other and scooping the filmy white beans into plastic buckets. It is the middle of the school day, but Madi, who looks to be about 10, says his family can't afford the fees to send him to the nearest school, five miles away. "I don't like this work," he says. "I would rather do something else. But I have to do this."

Sinikosson, accessible only by rutted jungle tracks, is a long way from the luxurious chocolate shops of New York and Paris. But it is here, on small West African farms like these, that 70 percent of the world's cocoa beans are grown - 40 percent from just one country, Ivory Coast. It's not only the landscape that is tough. Working and living conditions are brutal. Most villages lack electricity, running water, health clinics or schools. And to make ends meet, underage cocoa workers, like Madi and the two boys next to him, spend their days wielding machetes, handling pesticides and carrying heavy loads.

This type of child labor isn't supposed to exist in Ivory Coast. Not only is it explicitly barred by law - the official working age in the country is 18 - but since the issue first became public seven years ago, there has been an international campaign by the chocolate industry, governments and human rights organizations to eradicate the problem. Yet today child workers, many under the age of 10, are everywhere. Sometimes they're visibly scarred from their work. In the village of Lilo a young boy carrying a machete ambled along a road with a bandaged shin. He said he had cut his leg toiling in a cocoa patch."

Corporations and Human Rights? An oxymoron?

Sometimes we consumers think that corporations are just large entities out there that serve our consumption needs. Not only do they cater to our needs but they also provide jobs and keep the economy going. True; they do all these things. BUT corporations are also conglomerates that provide filter for our policies in this country as well as funnels through which the global economy operates. So what's wrong with that, one may ask?

More than we dare to think about. Human Rights Watch in conjunction with NYU School of Law's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice recently conducted an investigation and published a report on their website concerning business practices and the effect on human rights around the world. Here is the actual Human Rights Watch article entitled Business: Rights at Risk in the Global Economy. The full report can be found in pdf form on the CHRGI's website under "Full Report".

Corporations are entities that are sometimes given the rights of "individuals" and yet when they create problems or disregard the effects they have on individuals around the globe, all of a sudden they refuse to become liable or responsible for these problems. I think if they demand to be given the rights akin to an individual, they should also be held accountable as such and accept the due consequences when they mess up.

For the sake of profit, often individuals - particularly those who have no power or are "marginalized" as some would put it - are the ones who suffer the most. We often think that it's violence, poverty, diseases, or natural disasters that create suffering for these people; but the underlying causes of suffering can also be attributed to economic inabilities or what I think of as economic oppression by these corporate giants who are eager to calculate their profits at the end of every year.

We must raise our awareness and realize that the U.S. is a part of this - the government that caters to special interest groups and allows social welfare policy to be filtered through the lens of corporation and business elites, the government that is so fragmented that it cannot bring to light these issues and do something about them, and the capitalist influence and consumerism that hold us captive and play a large part in feeding the increasing inequality between rich and poor not just abroad but in the U.S. as well.

And for what profit, really? A well-oiled global economy that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, and leaves those in the middle either running to catch up with the rich or running to stay ahead of the poor? Is that the sort of future we want to leave our children?

Somalia

Somalia - another country in Africa that is in crisis.... More specifically, its people are in crisis. We have been hearing stories in the news about Kenya, Uganda, Chad, and various other countries as they have been in the news on and off. But I do not recall seeing Somalia in the news.

BBC's article titled it the "forgotten crisis" and you can see the article here. According to this article, the crisis in Somalia appears to be dire and at the core of that situation are the children - the most vulnerable when conflicts arise. 15000 children's lives are at risk if emergency aid does not arrive in the next 2 weeks; people are suffering from lack of sanitary water supplies; and 60% of the population has fled the capital city of Mogadishu. UNICEF declares it to be the worst place for children when all indicators are taken into consideration.

Here's a photo essay - a glimpse into the life of people in Somalia - from the International Rescue Committee.

And here are some more stories on the situation in Somalia:

IRIN Africa: One woman's story

IRIN Africa: The Plight of Internally Displaced Persons