Human Rights Group Sues to Protect African Child Laborers

WASHINGTON — A human rights advocacy group sued last week in Washington, D.C., against chocolate companies for their use of child labor on cocoa plantations in Africa.

The lawsuit says companies like Mars, Mondelez and Cargill have been slow to eliminate child labor while deceiving the public about their efforts.

As a result, child laborers are being led into lives of poverty and dangerous work conditions, according to the lawsuit filed by the public interest firm International Rights Advocates.

The lawsuit mentions the 2001 international Harkin-Engen protocol that set a goal of a 2005 deadline to eliminate child labor.

Instead, Cargill’s goal is to end contributions from its child workers by 2030, according to International Rights Advocates. Other companies that buy chocolate have similar timetables, the group says.

Evidence for the lawsuit is based partly on an unnamed whistleblower in Ghana who is described as a corporate official for a chocolate buying company that has contracts with the companies being sued. 

“Each extension of time of five or more years condemns another group of thousands of children, like plaintiffs herein, to a life of poverty, malnutrition and lack of education that might have allowed them to escape this imposed system of child slavery,” the lawsuit says.

“We for the first time have a whistleblower who has provided us an excellent consumer fraud case as well as an unjust enrichment claim,” Terrence Collingsworth, lead counsel for International Rights Advocates, told The Well News.

The lawsuit also accuses the chocolate companies of negligent supervision of child laborers, theft, intentional infliction of emotional distress and violations of the District of Columbia Consumer Protection Procedures Act.

The lawsuit represents a second effort to sue the chocolate companies. In June, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich dismissed a claim against Cargill after ruling the plaintiffs lacked standing and a “traceable connection” between the companies and the plantations where the child laborers worked in Mali and the Ivory Coast.

Collingsworth said the new lawsuit is based on local laws that are not available in federal court. 

Referring to the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act, he said, “Those are state law based claims.”

The alleged abuses were reported last month by CBS News in an investigative story that showed child workers at remote farms in Ghana. Some of the workers were “as young as 5 years old using machetes nearly as big as themselves” to harvest cocoa, the report said.

CBS referred to Mars, Inc., when its report said, “We found children working at each one of the farms — despite the company’s vow to have systems in place to eradicate child labor in its supply chain by 2025.”

Mars, whose chocolate-bearing products include M&Ms and Snickers, denied encouraging child labor in a statement on its website.

“Mars unequivocally condemns the use of child labor,” the statement said. “It has no place in our supply chain, and we are fully committed to helping to eradicate it.”

The company said it was unaware of the child labor among its contractors until it was reported by CBS News.

“Despite our repeated requests, CBS did not provide specific details of their investigation to Mars ahead of their broadcast, which meant that we were unable to look into the allegations raised in their program,” the company said.

Mars pledged to “continue to work diligently with parties across the cocoa sector to further help advance respect for human rights in the cocoa supply chain.”

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