This week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a lawsuit filed by former child slaves who once worked for Nestle. The court’s decision finalizes a lower court’s prior ruling, which Nestle previously attempted to overturn in an attempt to halt legal ramifications from individuals who worked in the African cocoa trade as children. In other words, Nestle failed in crushing a lawsuit that will hold the company liable for using child slave workers.
Nestle tried to have the child slavery suit thrown out, even though the mega corporation tried to win favor with local farmers to look the other way while they used child salve labor to source cocoa in the cheapest manner. West African nations are some of the largest exporters of cocoa, and though Nestle does not employ child slaves directly, the company consistently engaged in business deals with farmers who do.
The plaintiffs, originally from Mali, contend the companies aided and abetted human rights violations through their active involvement in purchasing cocoa from Ivory Coast. While aware of the child slavery problem, the companies, including Nestle, Archer-Daniels-Midland Co, and Cargill Inc, offered financial and technical assistance to local farmers in a bid to guarantee the cheapest source of cocoa, the plaintiffs said.
As Anti-Media summarized:
“Nineteen children freed from slavery near the Ivory Coast — and their new guardian — detailed the staggering conditions of the cutthroat trade: the young children worked ‘from dawn until dusk every day’ and were forced to sleep in small sheds. They were given a tin cup in which to urinate.
The children endured a six-month ‘breaking in’ process which included regular beatings. Sadly, they had difficulty understanding why they were not paid for their hard labor, which included carrying 100-pound bags of cocoa beans and, often, exposure to hazardous conditions.”
A 2000 documentary, Slavery: A Global Investigation, a documentary highlighting this issue, detailed the working conditions children face in West African nations.
Related: Does Nestle Still Think Water is Not a Basic Human Right?
Companies like Nestle claimed they had no idea that this was going on, but it is a long held belief that mega-corporations like Nestle not only knew of these hazardous conditions for children, but also helped to create them.
CNN’s ‘Cocoa-nomics’ also details how the industry abuses children’s rights in order to meet world cocoa demand.
![Photo credit: 10Campaign [1]](https://sp-ao.shortpixel.ai/client/to_auto,q_glossy,ret_img,w_600,h_317/https://naturalsociety.com/app/uploads/2016/01/neslte-child-slave-cocoa-.jpg)
Additional Sources:
Featured image credit: Dark Side of Chocolate
[1] Photo credit: 10Campaign
So, guilt by association? If Nestle buys from a nation that exploits children, apparently Nestle can be sued in the USA by the exploited children.
Now, Nestle is faced with the prospect that it will have to buy from somewhere else, or pay up in in a US court to the abused children. If Nestle does shift its purchases to other countries, does that mean that the children in the avoided country will be better off?
Bangladesh was criticized for the employment of underage persons in their textiles industries, some years ago. Bangladesh reformed its textile industry by excluding the underage persons, but thousands of children who could no longer work in the textile factories were reported to have ended up starving, taking jobs in other industries which treated them no better than the textile industry, or being forced into the sex trade as prostitutes. The Bangladesh children did not end up better off.
Many nations around the World use child labor, as a normal practice in their societies. In many cases, child labor is absolutely necessary to provide sufficient income for the family to avoid extreme poverty or even starvation. Some nations still have families, suffering from extreme poverty, that sell their children. The fate of these children is not pretty, to say the least – many forced into the sex trade (Bangkok, is an example), all forced into some sort of servitude.
What we are seeing here is a dissonance between the laws and standards of the First World nations like the USA and Third World nations such as cocoa-producing nations in Africa.
While any attempt to reduce child labor and slavery seems unarguably good for the human race, there remain 3 realities:
1. In some Third World countries child labor is seen as necessary for the survival of their families;
2. The punishment of buyers of goods from those Third World countries for those countries having allowed the use of child labor in production of those goods is likely to result in those buyers avoiding purchases from those countries and thus adding to their poverty; and
3. US lawsuits under US law over practices by citizens of Third World countries in their own countries represent an intrusion by US authorities into the affairs of those countries. This invites intrusive lawsuits in other nations against the US and its citizens over practices considered normal in the USA. Consider, for example, a lawsuit in, say, Afghanistan against a US car company alleging that the US car company has caused harmful climate change by selling gas-guzzling SUVs. Or a suit in South Africa against a car dealer that buys cars from a US car manufacturer, alleging that the US car manufacturer discriminates against black-skinned persons in employment practices (even though the car manufacturing company is entirely compliant with US law).
There are many differences between US laws and societal standards that could give rise to suits such as the one against Nestle. Consider the plight of women in Saudi Arabia – should any US oil company that buys oil from Saudi Arabia be subject to lawsuits by Saudi women who say that the oil company turned a blind eye to Saudi abuse of women when buying oil?
If corporations can’t exploit Americans, they’ll go to a country where they can.
So they’re going to be held liable for using child slaves which they did not use, and because of “a long-held belief” that they knew some farmers did. And the world manages to become a little more ridiculous.