Côte d'Ivoire & Conflict Cocoa

While chocolate serves to be a source of happiness in billions of people's everyday lives, there are many in the world experiencing the negative side of chocolate. Reports of economic imbalance and child labor are unfortunate facts surrounding the cocoa industry, leaving many cocoa farmers in poverty. Now, a recent program by Al Jazeera network has pointed out the cocoa trade's role in the violent conflict occurring in the Ivory Coast, one of the top cocoa producing countries in the world.

Few of the billions of consumers of chocolate around the globe are aware of the role that the cocoa trade has played in the armed conflict and political crisis that has ravaged the country for the past six years.

In 2002 what began as a troop mutiny became a full-scale civil war and the country divided into a rebel-held north and a government-controlled south, with UN peacekeepers patrolling a buffer zone between.

Although full scale fighting in the country was halted in 2004 and a peace deal signed in 2007 officially marked the end of the conflict that divided the country, there is an uneasy truce.

The rebel groups are using the lucrative nature of the cocoa trade to fund the weapons and resources keeping them in power and leaving the country in fear. Colombia has coca, while the Ivory Coast has cocoa.

It is estimated that hundreds of millions of dollars could have been illegally siphoned off from the cocoa trade by both the government and the rebels.

A considerable percentage of this money being used to fund the armed conflict, purposefully keeping the country in an uneasy state, so embezzlement of revenues from the cocoa sector is possible.

It is a two-part program with the first half giving a history of the conflict and showing the methods that the rebel groups have taken to illegally reign over the cocoa trade, keeping the country in unstable and with little hope of resolution in the near future.

It is in the end of the second half that non-profit organization, Global Witness speaks about their on-going investigation of the situation and their campaign to hold the chocolate industry accountable for the part they play in keeping the conflict alive.

Patrick Alley, director at Global Witness says this,

There is a high chance that your chocolate bar contains cocoa from Côte d'Ivoire and may have funded the conflict there, which leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. The chocolate industry should clean up its act and ensure that it only sells conflict-free chocolate.

Much like with the Fair Trade and Sweat-Free movements have been working with the chocolate industry to stop the use of child labor throughout the whole cocoa supply chain, Patrick Alley is calling on consumers and chocolate companies to take action in order to stop the conflict in the Ivory Coast.

Consumers should phone the helpline numbers on the back of their chocolate bars and demand that chocolate companies push their suppliers to support farmers, not the war effort. Suppliers should be transparent about where their money goes. They should ensure that it supports development in Côte d'Ivoire and not unaccountable elites on either side of the crisis.

See the second part after the jump and join Global Witness' efforts to bring conflict-free chocolate.