Date of publication: February 14, 2011
Source: Fox News
Author: Associated Press
..."The industry has invested far more in programs in Ghana, where the worst abuses are not quite as prevalent as in the Ivory Coast," said Timothy Newman, campaigns director of the Washington D.C.-based International Labor Rights Forum.
Newman also said children from the neighboring countries of Mali and Burkina Faso also continue to be trafficked to Ivorian farms, where 40 percent of the world's cocoa is produced.
..."The essential problem from the very beginning, was that the large chocolate companies were hiding behind the Harkin-Engel Protocol which is an entirely voluntary agreement with no enforcement mechanism. As a result, they have been able to continually drag their feet in taking responsibility for labor rights abuses in their own cocoa supply chains," Newman said.