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http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010711.html
"Reverse Trick-or-Treaters" Deliver Fair Trade Chocolate
Ben Block, 3 Nov 09

Dressed in masks and outfits reminiscent of the film The Matrix, a group
of foreign exchange students celebrated their first Halloween in proper
fashion on Saturday in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

But the classmates turned the U.S. tradition on its head. In addition to
accepting candy, the students handed back their own Fair
Trade-certified, organic dark chocolate.

"Farmers are paid more with Fair Trade, so they don't have to live in
poverty and their children can get an education," explained Gaurav
Noronha, a 15-year-old student from Mumbai, India, to a perplexed
neighbor. "The farmers from whom this company gets the cocoa, they are
paid fairly. Usually farmers are not paid well enough."

Noronha and his classmates were participating in "reverse
trick-or-treating," an effort to raise awareness about the prevalence
of child labor on cocoa farms in West Africa.

The San Francisco-based human rights group Global Exchange began the
campaign two years ago to put increased grassroots pressure on
international companies that purchase cocoa. The non-profit delivered
about 260,000 information packets this year, each containing a sample of
Fair Trade-certified chocolate, to parents, school groups, and religious
organizations that participated across the United States and Canada.

"We're hoping this will create a landslide of interest among chocolate
companies," said Adrienne Fitch-Frankel, coordinator of the reverse
trick-or-treating campaign. "There is an outrageous number of children
who are suffering from horrible back pain and other ergonomic neck
issues between the ages of 5 and 18 just so we can have chocolate."

The reverse trick-or-treating campaign also generates free
advertising for the growing Fair Trade movement. In the cocoa industry,
Fair Trade standards guarantee that farmers receive a premium of $150 on
top of market prices for each ton of cocoa they produce, as long as they
meet specified labor standards. For example, field workers must not be
younger than 15 years of age unless their education is not jeopardized
and they do not perform particularly hazardous tasks, such as wielding a
machete or applying pesticides. The program reasons that higher-paid
farmers are less likely to rely on child labor.

In the United States, Fair Trade chocolate has grown in popularity but
the market is relatively small compared to that in Europe. About 1,745
tons of the chocolate was imported into the country last year, nearly
double the total from 2007. Worldwide, 10,299 tons of Fair
Trade-certified cocoa was sold in 2008, according to Fairtrade Labelling
Organizations International.

"We're just trying to make people aware that there are other options out
there, and important issues need to be considered," said Michael Zelmer,
communications director for TransFair Canada, a Fair Trade certification
body that promotes the reverse trick-or-treating campaign in Canada.

The world's largest chocolate manufacturers agreed in 2001 to ensure
that their products are not grown and processed on farms where the
"worst forms of child labor," such as trafficking children and
compulsory labor, persist. Such incidents are on the decline, yet nearly
2 million children still work on cocoa farms in Côte
d'Ivoire and Ghana, often without pay, according to the Payson Center
for International Development at Tulane University, which the U.S.
Department of Labor tasked to monitor progress on the 2001 agreement.

The governments of the two West African countries, where about 75
percent of the world's cocoa is grown, have since established
child-labor monitoring systems. The governments are also partnering with
the international law enforcement body INTERPOL to arrest farmers who
are known to use child labor. A June sting operation freed 54 children
who were trafficked to southeast Côte d'Ivoire from seven different
African nations.

In addition, the chocolate industry is participating in various
certification schemes that strive to reduce child labor. Companies such
as Mars, Nestlé, and Cargill are cooperating with UTZ CERTIFIED, a
program that sets social criteria similar to Fair Trade, based on
International Labour Organization conventions.

Rather than provide farmers with a premium, many companies that have
partnered with UTZ support separate programs that train cocoa farmers on
advanced production methods and proper labor conditions.

"One of the concerns we've seen is that some of the activities children
are involved in are inappropriate to their age: carrying heavy loads,
using machetes on farms," said Bill Guyton, president of the World Cocoa
Foundation, a developer of several industry-supported training sessions
in cocoa-growing regions of Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Americas.
"Through farmer field schools, we explain to parents why activities are
dangerous to young people."

Cadbury's aligned this year with Fair Trade for its chocolate products
in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

"These certifications are a major step forward because finally most of
these companies recognize the need to take responsibility for labor
standards in the cocoa supply chain. It itself is a victory," said Tim
Newman, campaign director at the International Labor Rights Forum. "The
next step is to provide consumers with information about what these
programs actually mean.... Some standards are stronger than others in
enforcing worker rights."

Despite the progress of these programs, Tulane University's Payson
Center said in a 2009 report that any certification system is unlikely
to eliminate child labor completely.

"The ability to verify a 100-percent free [worst-forms of child labor]
environment is doubtful," the report said. "More realistic objectives
should be established by the countries."

For the foreign exchange students, who are participanting in a U.S.
State Department youth leadership program, the campaign was an
introduction to Fair Trade. Most of them visited neighbors who were
unfamiliar with the program as well.

"Many were not aware what Fair Trade is, but many are eager to find
out," said Fabian Bollinger, a student from Schaffausen, Switzerland.

Jody Axinn, a liaison for the American Field Service/Youth Exchange and
Study Program (AFS/YES), chose to engage the students in the reverse
trick-or-treating campaign in hopes that the students would raise
awareness of Fair Trade in their home countries of India, Indonesia,
Mozambique, and Switzerland.

"They come from countries that would benefit if Fair Trade was more
widely spread," Axinn said. "If they bring the idea back to their
country, and it's more widely spread on the producer side, it'd help."

This piece originally appeared on Worldwatch Institute.

--
Dan Clore

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