Chocolate. It’s a sweet treat that many of us indulge in. But your M&M’s, KitKat, Ferrero Rocher, Mars Bar, Cadbury, Lindt, and Godiva chocolate has a disturbing link to child slavery in the West African cocoa industry. 
 
Child exploitation has plagued the cocoa industry in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana— which together produce 60 percent of the world’s cocoa[1]—for decades. Despite promises from the world’s largest chocolate companies to eradicate the problem, evidence reveals that they have fallen far short of achieving their goal. Did you know that  little slaves never tried the taste of a piece of chocolate. For them it is only a brown, bitter powder! Chocolate industry leaders promised under the Harkin-Engel Protocol nearly 20 years ago to substantially reduce the worst forms of child labor—including child slavery— in the cocoa sector but they have failed to meet that goal.