Chocolate - The Bitter Truth

The widespread use of children in cocoa production is controversial not only because of the usual concerns about child labor and exploitation, but also because up to 12,000 of the 200,000 children working in Ivory Coast, the world's biggest producer of cocoa, may be victims of human trafficking or slavery. Most attention on this subject has focused on West Africa, which collectively supplies nearly 80% of the world's cocoa and Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in particular, which supplies half of the world's cocoa. Thirty percent of children under age 15 in sub-Saharan Africa are child laborers, mostly in agricultural activities including cocoa farming.