Instead of playing games with their friends, children in the Ivory Coast of Africa are kidnapped and enslaved, spending their childhoods in harvest cocoa beans, the main ingredient in chocolate. . That's right; your candy bar may have been made using child slave labor. Children in this region are kidnapped and forced to walk miles away from their villages. Most of them falsely claim that they will make money; poverty is a big problem in this region. Once they arrive at the plantation, they are forced to endure an unimaginable amount of pain and suffering, working long hours and locked in cabins at night to prevent their escape. If they have the courage to try to return home, they are lucky not to be captured and murdered. A boy who escaped this tragedy in Africa was interviewed and said this about American consumers: "They appreciate something that I suffered to make." I worked hard with them, but I didn't see any benefit. They eat my flesh. » Outraged by this information, several California residents decided to file a complaint against three of the largest chocolate producers in the United States: Hershey, Nestlé and Mars. This is not the first time the chocolate industry has been accused of using child labor as a source of economic gain. In 2000, Hershey was investigated for using child slave labor to harvest its cocoa beans; they denied knowledge of it and promised to reduce the number of children used as slaves. work around the world. Over the past 15 years, they have significantly reduced the number of children subjected to this act of violence. According to a report produced by the Payson Center for International Development at Tulane University and sponsored by the US.... middle of paper ...... slavery is abolished worldwide, we must hold companies that exploit child labor held accountable for their actions. If we don't speak out, we support these companies' decisions to do so. continue to exploit the labor of these children for economic purposes. Just like in colonial times, cocoa plantation owners profit from not paying their workers. These individuals are treated horribly and degraded; their only use for plantation owners is to harvest cocoa beans. For the world to get rid of this injustice, we must raise awareness that this practice is still in place. Movements such as the one led by individuals in California are changing the way the chocolate industry approaches slavery and I believe that if we continue to pressure them not to use slave labor, this practice will eventually be banned worldwide..