The run up to Easter, when the British prepare to chomp their way through 80m Easter eggs, is the traditional time of year for guilt fuelled exposés of the continuing problem of child labour in the cocoa industry.
A recently aired Panorama documentary sees a renewed media focus on the issue in the UK, one of many since harrowing stories of West African child slaves first came to global public attention ten years ago.
That original media and public outcry paved the way for the Harkin-Engel Protocol, a voluntary code of self-regulation that has defined chocolate industry efforts to tackle the worse forms of child labour in the supply chain over the past nine years.
Children and chocolate have long been associated; it is because chocolate is such a potent symbol of the innocent joys of childhood that revelations about children being trafficked or forced to undertake hazardous and excessive work on cocoa farms are so incendiary.
For this blog post, Trading Visions reflects on some of these issues, with contributions from four authors exploring the intersection of childhood and chocolate.
What has big chocolate been doing about child labour in the cocoa industry?
by Michael Niemann
Child labour and cocoa: whose voices prevail?
by Amanda Berlan
Chocolate and childhood in the North
by Catherine Phipps
Report from a child labour workshop in Ghana
by Tom Allen
