• 40% of the world’s cocoa supply comes from the Ivory Coast
• Local activists in Ivory Coast claim 90% of its cocoa plantations use slave labour
• In 2003 the US State Department estimated there were over 109,000 children in forced labour on Ivory Coast Cocoa farms
• In 2005 The International Labour Organisation (ILO) claimed there were over 150,000 children working under the worst forms of child labour in the cocoa industry in the Ivory Coast alone. An estimated 12,000 of whom had been trafficked.
• The Harkin-Engel Protocol, set up in the USA in 2001 has done little to discourage child slave labour (It’s a system of voluntary standards to solve the child labour problem)
• In June 2009 Interpol rescued 54 child slaves from Ivory Coast cocoa plantations
• Many New Zealand chocolate companies source their cocoa from Ghana claiming it to be slave-free – but is it?
• To compete with lower prices from the Ivory Coast, farmers in Ghana are also using slave labour to survive
• Following the rescue of slaves in June 2009, Interpol is to carry out a further operation to rescue child slaves from Ghanaian cocoa plantations
• In 2009 Interpol estimated hundreds of thousands of children were working illegally in plantations across Ivory Coast and Ghana
• In Feb 2009, The New Zealand Parliamentary Select Committee of foreign affairs, defense and trade recommended that NZ corporate companies label products “slave free”
• The above advice was the result of a 17,000 strong Trade Aid petition asking for a ban on imports of slave made products submitted to parliament in Aug 2007
• The recent Bill calling for a ban on imports of goods made with slave labour (Sponsored by Labour’s Maryan Street) and supported by Labour, Green, Progressives, United Future and Maori Parties was thrown out of Parliament
• The existence of slavery contrasts sharply with the International remembrance day celebrated on August 23rd each year for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition

Read Aly Diabente's story - a slave at 11years old

Sources for statements:
- IITA cocoa research 2002
- US Department of Labour 2003
- International Labour Organisation 2005
- Interpol media release Aug 3, 2009