abusesaffiliationarrow-downarrow-leftarrow-rightarrow-upattack-typeblueskyburgerchevron-downchevron-leftchevron-rightchevron-upClock iconclosedeletedevelopment-povertydiscriminationdollardownloademailenvironmentexternal-linkfacebookfilterflaggenderglobeglobegroupshealthC4067174-3DD9-4B9E-AD64-284FDAAE6338@1xinformation-outlineinformationinstagraminvestment-trade-globalisationissueslabourlanguagesShapeCombined Shapeline, chart, up, arrow, graphLinkedInlocationmap-pinminusnewsorganisationotheroverviewpluspreviewArtboard 185profilerefreshIconnewssearchsecurityPathStock downStock steadyStock uptagticktooltiptwitteruniversalitywebwhatsappxIcons / Social / YouTube

這頁面沒有繁體中文版本,現以English顯示

文章

2021年8月12日

作者:
Irit Tamir, Oxfam

Mali: Corporations need to acknowledge the harms they’ve caused in cocoa farms, take action to fix them, & commit to trading practices that enable farmers to achieve a living income

Chocolate, slave labor, and corporate greed’ 6 August 2021

There’s a dirty secret about the chocolate industry: it profits from child labor and enslavement. The Supreme Court just made it harder for six abused laborers to seek redress. Chocolate bars. They evoke happiness and the sweet pleasures of childhood. Which made for bitter irony when the Supreme Court declined to hold chocolate makers accountable for their links to child and slave labor. Many cocoa farmers in West Africa—source of around 70% of the world’s cocoa—engage in human trafficking and child labor, including child slavery. Consumers may not be aware, but no one familiar with the industry disputes it. A key driver is that cocoa prices do not cover the cost of production—and no wonder: farmers only earn 6.6 percent of the price of a chocolate bar and many are themselves living in poverty.

Nestlé USA and Cargill—the defendants in the case that went before the Supreme Court—use terms like “unacceptable,” “egregious,” and “heartbreaking” to describe the cruel labor practices, yet they have failed to use their economic might to end them or even root them out of their own supply chains. When six Malians brought suit against the two corporations in 2005, alleging they had been enslaved as children to work in the cocoa plantations, they described working long hours without pay, suffering hunger, hazardous working conditions, and brutal beatings. They claimed that the companies—while not owning or operating the plantations where they worked—had knowingly aided and abetted human-rights abuses by providing slave-holding farmers with tools and technical and financial resources, and by purchasing their produce. They based their suit on the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which allows foreigners to bring lawsuits in US courts for violations of international law. At issue from the outset has been whether or not that statute applies in this case; in other words, rather than acknowledge and legally address their role in driving child slavery, the companies argued that there should be no liability for US companies whose practices contribute to human-rights abuses.

…In the story of chocolate, the echoes of colonialism are unmistakable. The companies involved try to project modern-day sensibilities with slick publications about their dedication to combatting child labor, but the trafficked, enslaved children that harvest the cocoa beans for their chocolate bars might as well be living two centuries ago. Is this the “American competitiveness” that corporations should be fighting for and our highest court defending? The Malians will get a chance to strengthen their case and put it forward again, but the question remains: why are companies that agreed on the principle of remedies fighting so hard to stop remedy-seekers in their tracks? Corporations need to acknowledge the harms they’ve caused, take action to fix them, and commit to trading practices that enable cocoa farmers to achieve a living income. Only then can we hope for an end to labor practices that risk and ruin the lives of children.

隱私資訊

本網站使用 cookie 和其他網絡存儲技術。您可以在下方設置您的隱私選項。您所作的更改將立即生效。

有關我們使用網絡儲存技術的更多資訊,請參閱我們的 數據使用和 Cookie 政策

Strictly necessary storage

ON
OFF

Necessary storage enables core site functionality. This site cannot function without it, so it can only be disabled by changing settings in your browser.

分析cookie

ON
OFF

您瀏覽本網頁時我們將以Google Analytics收集信息。接受此cookie將有助我們理解您的瀏覽資訊,並協助我們改善呈現資訊的方法。所有分析資訊都以匿名方式收集,我們並不能用相關資訊得到您的個人信息。谷歌在所有主要瀏覽器中都提供退出Google Analytics的添加應用程式。

市場營銷cookies

ON
OFF

我們從第三方網站獲得企業責任資訊,當中包括社交媒體和搜尋引擎。這些cookie協助我們理解相關瀏覽數據。

您在此網站上的隱私選項

本網站使用 cookie 和其他網絡儲存技術來增強您在必要核心功能之外的體驗。