Chocolate guilty of prolonging Ivory Coast's war
Blogged by: Nina Brenjo
A worker in western Ivory Coast gathers new species of cocoa nuts. REUTERS\Thierry Gouegnon
That daily bar of chocolate you gobble down may already have you worrying about your weight and health, but those aren't the only reasons for feeling guilty. Pressure group Global Witness says cocoa exports from Ivory Coast are funding and prolonging conflict in the world's largest cocoa producer, Britain's Financial Times reports.
Just as diamonds played a key role in Liberia's civil war, both the government and rebels have used cocoa profits to finance their war operations, the pressure group says. In the case of the government, 30 percent of military costs during one six-month period were funded by cocoa proceeds. Meanwhile, rebels have been reaping around $30 million per year since 2004.
Global Witness now wants companies exporting cocoa to make public the origin of the cocoa beans, along with any payments to the government. It also urges exporters to use their influence to prevent money being siphoned off for war efforts.
The export companies contacted by the paper all deny they have any authority over how Ivory Coast's government spends cocoa revenues.
"Tracing or labelling individual beans is, as a practical matter, impossible," Susan Smith, spokeswoman for the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, a trade group that includes Nestle and Hershey's, tells the paper.
But now that war in Ivory Coast is over, Global Witness says an inappropriate use of cocoa money could slow down the process of reaching a final peace agreement.
And there are plenty of signs that implementing all aspects of a March peace agreement may take longer than anticipated, according to The New York Time's Lydia Polgreen.
Former rebel leader Guillaume Soro is now prime minister, next to his old enemy, President Laurent Gbagbo. The disarmament process has started and the U.N. checkpoint between Abidjan and northern Bouake that rebels used to hold is now gone. But many others remain in place.
"Every week I make this trip, and every week it is the same," truck driver Kone Djakandja tells the paper. "The rebels stop me and demand money. The government soldiers demand money. They say we are one country now, but it is not a reality yet."
The March accord is hardly the first peace agreement that has failed to produce any results. But the latest agreement offers hope because it's the first time the two leaders have been personally involved in striking a deal.
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5 responses to “Chocolate guilty of prolonging Ivory Coast's war”
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12 Jun 2007 15:07:33 GMT
Contrary to what industry groups might have you believe, "tracing or labelling individual beans, as a practical matter" is NOT impossible. It is done all the time in the coffee industry, and "traceability" is increasingly an imperative in the coffee industry, and not necessarily even for ethical reasons -- consumers of high-end coffees want to verify the origin of their coffees just as connoisseurs of fine wines want to know the region where the origin of the grapes from which their wine was made.
One leading example is Cooperative Coffees, a group of 22 progressive coffee companies in the United States and Canada, that makes documents available for all the containers of coffee it buys: http://coopcoffees.com/what13 Jun 2007 12:17:12 GMT
Anything is possible if the manufacturers want to do it. However, it is not just the funding that worries them, it is the unethical purchase of ordinary cocoa beans where the grower has been forced to take a low price for their crops. This necessitates the use of the families children to help meaning that they are unable to attend school and obtain an education to keep them out of the poverty trap.
13 Jun 2007 16:20:31 GMT
This is how forgein trade has been for to long. Just like in Amercia we sell our steel to China and other good and buy it back for more closing down factories and other plant in the United Sates, so the Us companies can pay workers little wage so their bottom line is larger. Does this make sense to you. It doesn't to me. The citizen of Ghana and other parts of Africa need their own equipment and good to put thier people to work so that their families can feed their children and thier economy can rise. We have far to long kept them hostage. Not letting them run thier own companies and hire thier own people. What China and other countries do is denie this logic. This way they can get these important resources for a pitence and keep the African nation depressed. Lori McMaster
13 Jun 2007 19:10:19 GMT
It is interesting to compare this post with your post 3 days ago ("Does Africa really need more aid?"). The logical answer to the prior post would be that Africa needs not more aid but instead economic opportunities. And that includes of course exporting cocoa.
I find the comparison with diamonds rather dangerous. Diamonds can be monopolized by a small number of people who take all the profit, while the production of cocoa involves much more people. I understand the problems, but I doubt whether an economic boycot is really the solution.20 Jun 2007 07:34:42 GMT
Wim:
I agree that boycotts are pretty blunt instruments that can punish precisely the people they are designed to help, and so should be undertaken thoughtfully. I would, however, caution against thinking that power is not hyperconcentrated in commodities trading. In bananas, Dole, Chiquita and Del Monte control the vast majority of the world's supply; in coffee, the fact that smallholder farmers continue to suffer long after coffee prices have rebounded suggests that the "coffee crisis" was not limited to low prices but the inordinate concentration of wealth and power at the top of the "coffee food chain"; chocolate is not much different--most of the cocoa beans grown in West Africa find their way into the production lines of a small number of companies. We shouldn't be fooled by the large number of chocolate "option" in supermarket aisles in Europe and the United States into thinking that there is real choice in chocolate--most of those brands are owned by a small number of ! transnational companies that dominate the world cocoa markets.