The Tariff Act prohibits the importation of cocoa harvested by forced child labor. There is no question factually that cocoa from Côte d’Ivoire produced by the offending companies is harvested with forced child labor, and the companies promised to stop their admitted use of child labor in 2001 and have failed to do so after 21 years of false promises.
On February 14, 2020, International Rights Advocates and Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) filed a petition under Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (the Petition) asking that U.S. Custom and Border Protection (CBP) take action, as provided for in its legislation, to ban the importation of cocoa by nine specific companies with clear records of harvesting cocoa with forced child labor in Côte d’Ivoire. The offending companies are: Nestlé, Cargill, Barry Callebaut, Mars, Olam, Hershey, Mondelēz, World’s Finest Chocolate, Inc., and Blommer Chocolate Co.
Two years later, the CBP has taken no action to follow its legal duty and implementing regulations to require the major cocoa companies to keep the very promise they made in 2001 in signing the Harkin-Engel Protocol to stop profiting from child labor. Accordingly, on February 14, 2022, IRAdvocates and CAL submitted a letter to the new CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus demanding that he take action on the pending Petition. The letter was joined by many organizations that care about the exploitation of children in the global economy, including the AFL-CIO, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the International Longshore Warehouse Union, and the Child Labor Coalition. In addition, numerous sustainable chocolate companies and concerned individuals from around the world joined in demanding an end to abusive child labor by multinational chocolate companies.
Background
The Petition referenced official, undisputed reports confirming massive numbers of child laborers in cocoa harvesting and supplemental evidence that many of these children are trafficked and forced to work on cocoa plantations. This past summer, on June 25, 2021, the Petitioners submitted a supplemental petition to CBP providing further evidence of trafficking and forced child labor in the Ivorian cocoa industry. This petition looked not just at specific instances of forced labor, but also documented new information about the manner in which child trafficking occurs, including through which border crossings, and identified specific actors involved in the trade.
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