The Dark Side of Chocolate

Today was certainly a fun, productive day. A visit to the dentist, the optometrist, the mall, Costco (where I bought the most amazing rolls) and then the market. My dad finally allowed me to buy some chocolate, which I have been craving for months now due to the fact that it really helps with my stress levels.

I came home lighthearted and energized to begin doing some more research on child labor. I searched "child labor" up on Youtube, and a video about chocolate came up.

Chocolate? I thought. What does that have to do with child labor...?

I clicked on it anyway, sat back, and opened my Hershey's bar.

The shocking truth is, the chocolate industry has been accused of using child labor to produce its cocoa beans. I almost choked on my chocolate bar the first few seconds of the video when the narrator told me about it.

The Ivory Coast in Africa is where a lot of the cocoa beans are produced, and then sent to major chocolate and confectionery companies around the world. Children are brought across the border from nearby countries like Mali, to work in these plantations. When the traffickers are convincing the children to leave their village, they promise their families to pay each child a fair wage and treat them with care. But none of that really happens.

The children are paid nothing, treated like dirty vermin, and beat to numbness. They must work hours and hours with dangerous tools in the plantations, and there is no means of escape and no way to get back home.

The chocolate industry largely denies their use of child labor, but in reality it's happening.

So this is just food for thought. I hope to raise awareness about this issue, as well as many others, through my blog. Thanks and have a great day!

Modern Day Slavery

I recently read about restaveks. You may not know what those are, as this issue isn't very upfront in media or our television networks here in America.

Restavek is a Creole term, and it is used to describe children in Haiti who are given away by their parents, who are too poor or do not have the means to take care of them. You see, many parents in Haiti decide to have ten, twelve, or even fourteen plus children, and unless they are very wealthy, that's definitely more than they can take care of.

If you thought the Duggar family on 19 Kids and Counting was extreme, well, you haven't seen anything yet.

Anyway, as I was saying, these children are sent away by their parents to host families, usually dwell in urban areas. The parents hope that these host families have the means to take better care of the children than they can, and provide them with more benefits. They send them away in high hopes that their children will have an opportunity to receive an education, gain a professional occupation, and then escape the cycle of poverty.

That's not how it usually works out, though.

The restavek system is considered, by the United Nations, a form of modern slavery. (Yes, slavery still exists even in the 21st century.) The children sent to host families are beaten, driven to work fourteen or more hours a day, and deprived of their basic human rights. 

One 16-year-old restavek girl says, in a statement, that she wakes up every morning before the sun rises, cooks breakfast  for the host family, sweeps the floor while they eat and then eats what is left over. Then she accompanies the family's 15-year-old son to school, comes back, and labors throughout the day while he is gone. Her chores may include going to the market to buy produce, carrying a 25-pound bucket of water from the well to the home, then chopping and lugging firewood, cooking dinner for the family, and then finally getting some scraps to eat and going to bed.

That, and add in some beatings from her host guardian, and occasionally being sexually abused by the men in the family.

Restaveks aren't treated as humans. They're worked like animals.

Haiti is already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere; because of the earthquake in 2010 its economy took an even bigger dive. They have more problems than they can deal with now, with poverty sweeping the nation at its feet. 

But children are suffering. Children are the future of this despairing country, and children are being enslaved.

You can help: restavekfreedom.org