JessicaG
Dec 29, 2012
Writing Feedback / Report on the Dark Side of Chocolate [4]
The Dark Side of Chocolate is a documentary film about the manipulation and slave trading of African children for the ingathering of chocolate still taking place nearly ten years after the cocoa industry pledged to end it. Cocoa plantations in places such as Ghana and the Ivory Coast provide 80% of the world's chocolate. Chocolate producers around the world have been pressured to "verify their chocolate is not the product of child labour or slavery." In 2001, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association and its members signed a document called the Harkin-Engel Protocol that prohibited the harvest of their cocoa beans through means of child workers. Regardless of this effort, copious children are still forced to work on cocoa plantations in Africa. Due to this conflicting stance, the filmmakers went undercover to determine the reality. The documentary starts with the investigation of journeying to the western coast of Africa in the country of Mali, the country were children were rumoured to be smuggled from and then transported to the Ivory Coast. The team of journalists intended to investigate human trafficking and child labour in the Ivory Coast and its upshot on the worldwide chocolate manufacturing industry. The documentary starts in Cologne, Germany were each vendor is asked at a gathering of chocolate makers where their chocolate is imported from. Their comebacks lead to the assumption that almost all the chocolate is imported from someplace in Africa. Their detective work leads them to find that Mali was trafficking children at bus stations by bribing them with work and money, or by kidnapping them from villages. Afterward, they are taken to towns near the border of Africa, where another trafficker transports the children over the border. Then they are left with a third trafficker who sells the children to plantations. The children, ranging in age from 10 to 15, are forced to do hard labour, physically abused, and paid poor wages or none at all. When confronted with the agreement, the Harkin-Engel Protocol, the corporate representatives of some of these companies denied all rumours of child labour and trafficking. But the final investigations of the filmmakers proved the abuse of children on cocoa plantations.
The Dark Side of Chocolate is a documentary film about the manipulation and slave trading of African children for the ingathering of chocolate still taking place nearly ten years after the cocoa industry pledged to end it. Cocoa plantations in places such as Ghana and the Ivory Coast provide 80% of the world's chocolate. Chocolate producers around the world have been pressured to "verify their chocolate is not the product of child labour or slavery." In 2001, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association and its members signed a document called the Harkin-Engel Protocol that prohibited the harvest of their cocoa beans through means of child workers. Regardless of this effort, copious children are still forced to work on cocoa plantations in Africa. Due to this conflicting stance, the filmmakers went undercover to determine the reality. The documentary starts with the investigation of journeying to the western coast of Africa in the country of Mali, the country were children were rumoured to be smuggled from and then transported to the Ivory Coast. The team of journalists intended to investigate human trafficking and child labour in the Ivory Coast and its upshot on the worldwide chocolate manufacturing industry. The documentary starts in Cologne, Germany were each vendor is asked at a gathering of chocolate makers where their chocolate is imported from. Their comebacks lead to the assumption that almost all the chocolate is imported from someplace in Africa. Their detective work leads them to find that Mali was trafficking children at bus stations by bribing them with work and money, or by kidnapping them from villages. Afterward, they are taken to towns near the border of Africa, where another trafficker transports the children over the border. Then they are left with a third trafficker who sells the children to plantations. The children, ranging in age from 10 to 15, are forced to do hard labour, physically abused, and paid poor wages or none at all. When confronted with the agreement, the Harkin-Engel Protocol, the corporate representatives of some of these companies denied all rumours of child labour and trafficking. But the final investigations of the filmmakers proved the abuse of children on cocoa plantations.