90% of world chocolate comes from farms of 12 acres or less, mostly in the poor developing countries of West Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. A survey report, advised and supervised by the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) and the International Labour Office (ILO), published in 2002 found 284,000 children in West Africa working in hazardous conditions on cocoa farms, many of them working under forced labour conditions. Cocoa farming families earn as little as US$30 - $110 per family member per year. The children of these families are by necessity workers and rarely attend school. Many child labourers on West African cocoa farms work in dangerous conditions, handling pesticides and chemicals without any protective equipment and being used to clear land by hand with machetes.

Read the full article, written by Steve Knapp for the Just Change magazine, here