The Chocolate Industry Always Puts Money First, Even Before The Lives Of Children

Many people all over the world enjoy the tasty treat known as chocolate. But little do they know, there is a dark side to chocolate. They are oblivious to what is really going on within this industry. Children are being forced to work in cocoa factories for many years and have their families and childhoods taken away from them. Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana produce 60% of cocoa in the world each year, but 1.56 million children are involved in child labor on cocoa farms in just these two countries. These children are abducted by traffickers, people who transport children and take them to the people they are paid by, and in this case, they are taken to cocoa farms. They are captured from their small villages and will likely not see their friends and family for years.

My first reason that this should be stopped is that this violates basic human rights. Children should be able to live their lives safely with their families, not starving and doing back-breaking work. Children working on cocoa farms are mostly between the ages of 12 and 16, but children as young as five have been found. Instead of working on cocoa farms, they should be getting an education and enjoying their childhood.

Another reason this is not right is that it is illegal. It is not within the law to kidnap children and force them to work with no pay. These companies are lying to us all, and many people working in these companies are kept in the dark about what is really going on.

Some people may argue that the cocoa industry is making more money and getting more advanced while using child labor, but the price these children have to pay far outweighs the rewards. While the people high up in the companies are reaping the rewards of child labor, they are not experiencing what the children being abducted have to go through, and how the lives of the children are being reduced to hardly anything at all.

In conclusion, the chocolate companies using child labor need to be stopped and realize all the terrible things they are putting children through. This type of kidnapping is especially cruel because it ruins the lives that children could have had ahead of them, and it scars them for life.