Three among the biggest chocolate manufacturers
in the world, Mars, Nestle, and Hershey, are set to face a lawsuit related to
child slavery in the US. This comes after eight children claimed they were used as labourers on the corporations’ cocoa plantations on Ivory Coast. The lawsuit claims that
the companies were involved in an illegal enslavement of ‘thousands’ of children in
their farms, as per a report by The Guardian.

The lawsuit, launched by former
workers in the plants who are presently all young adults and hail from Mali, sought damages for dehumanising actions such as forced labour, unjustly obtained
labour, negligence in supervision as well as intentionally inflicted emotional
distress.

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The corporations Nestlé, Cargill,
Barry Callebaut, Mars, Olam, Hershey and Mondelēz have all been mentioned in
the suit issued by Washington DC-based firm International Rights Advocates
(IRA).

All eight reportedly faced slave
labour in the West African country of Ivory Coast , which produces about 45% of the globally manufactured
cocoa – a key ingredient of chocolate.

This lawsuit marks the first of its
kind in the US, and notes that the experience faced by the former child slaves reflects
similar atrocities faced by thousands of other minors.

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Reportedly, the case at hand is not a
disconnected, one-off scenario, as the production of cocoa, long since, has
been associated with problems such as child slavery, human rights abuse, and significantly
low wages in West Africa.