"Candy giants sued over failure to end child labor on chocolate plantations in Ghana", 30 Nov 2023

Human rights advocates filed a class action this week against major chocolate companies behind famous treats like M&M’s, Snickers and Oreos over their failure to end the use of child labor on cocoa plantations in African countries like Ghana.

The suit, brought by International Rights Advocates in the D.C. Superior Court, accuses chocolate giants Mars, Mondelēz and Cargill of purposely dragging their feet to phase out the use of child labor, misleading the public about their efforts and condemning generations of children to a life of poverty and dangerous conditions.

The rights group highlights the Harkin-Engen protocol, an international agreement from 2001... aimed at ending child labor. 

Harkin-Engen set a 2005 deadline, but the companies have since done little to meet that goal and have instead continued to push the deadline back...

Mars, Mondelēz and Cargill did not respond to requests for comment...

Included in the suit are detailed descriptions of the conditions and injuries the child laborer plaintiffs have suffered from working on the cocoa plantations, some of whom began working when they were four years old. They each had to drop out of school due to an inability to pay school fees and began working on the plantations full time to help support their families...

The children work with sharp machetes to weed and trim cocoa trees, cut down cocoa pods and open them. The suit includes photos of the scars across their bodies from the machetes.

They are also responsible for applying pesticides and herbicides to the crops without protective equipment. The poisons sometimes make the children sick and require hospital visits, the plaintiffs say...