Côte d'Ivoire
Massive use of slaves on Ivorian cocoa plantations documented

afrol.com, 29 September - A documentary shown on British television station Channel 4 on Thursday documented the massive use of slaves as labour force on Ivorian cocoa plantations. Cocoa is among the major export products of Côte d'Ivoire. The documentary made unsubstantiated allegations damaging the Ivory Coast, said Kouadio Adjoumani, Ivory Coast's ambassador to the UK, reported BBC. 

The enslavement documented mainly involves children abducted or sold in Mali and transported to Côte d'Ivoire. The children, most of whom are boys, some as young as ten years old, are trafficked to work on cocoa, coffee and cotton plantations. 

Estimates of the numbers of children involved in this human trade between the two countries vary, the NGO Anti-Slavery informs. They range from the Malian figure of 600, based on the number of children repatriated and arrested at the border between 1995 and 1998, to UNICEF's estimate of 10.000 to 15.000 boys currently working on Ivorian plantations. The UNICEF figure, however, does not identify how many work illegally. 

According to the Channel 4 documentary, the scale of slavery was even bigger in Côte d'Ivoire. It claimed that up to 90% of the cocoa farms used slave labour. Ivorian ambassador to the UK, Kouadio Adjoumani, called this an "absurdity". He claimed this was "shown up by the simple fact that this would mean that nearly every one of the 700.000 farmers employs slaves, patently nonsense as anyone with any knowledge of our country would know," according to BBC. Also cocoa traders and the British chocolate industry doubted that the farms visited by Channel 4 were representative.

The documentary reportedly made a strong impression on British TV-viewers, as the fact that slavery, child labour and forced labour still is widespread in Africa not is well known in Europe. The protests from the Ivorian ambassador and cocoa industry can be understood on that background.

However protesting against the allegations of Channel 4, Malian and Ivorian governments have admitted there is a problem in child trafficking and use of slave labour. On 6 September, thus, Mali and Côte d'Ivoire signed an agreement prohibiting the illegal trafficking of children for labour between the two countries. The accord states that both countries must develop legislation regarding the movement of children abroad, according to Anti-Slavery. 

The work on cocoa plantations is harsh. The backbone of plantation work is backbreaking labour, done with little help from mechanisation, under gruelling conditions, according to UNICEF. And in this planting and plucking, hoeing and raking, children in general play a large, and largely invisible, role all over Africa.

"It is an international disgrace that over 20 million people are working as slaves in the world today," Mike Dottridge, Director of Anti-Slavery International said. Anti-Slavery is the world's oldest international human rights organisation and works exclusively for the elimination of all forms of slavery around the world. 

Sources: Based on Anti-Slavery, BBC and UNICEF

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