Human rights group International Rights Advocates on Friday filed a class-action lawsuit against chocolate maker like Nestle, Mars and Hershey on behalf of eight Malian men who claim that they were used as slave labour when they were children at cocoa plantations on the Ivory Coast.
The men claimed that they were trafficked to the Ivory Coast, where they were forced to harvest cocoa. The men say they were employed at the cocoa farms through trickery and deception. They have also alleged that in several instances, children have been forced into labour without proper travel documents— the children had no idea of where they were or how to get back to their families.
The men have named seven companies— Cargill, Barry Callebaut, Mars, Olam, Hershey and Mondelēz as defendants and accused them of using thousands of children as labour in cocoa farms.
The lawsuit filed by the IRA advocates says the companies have ahead a “long history” of using child labour.
The companies had signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol in 2001, which said they would cease using child labour by 2005, the lawsuit reads, The Guardian has reported.
The men also allege that they were made to work without pay and are demanding damages for being exploited and seek further compensation for negligent supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
For several years, production of cocoa on the western coast of Africa has been tainted with human rights abuse, structural poverty, unjust wages and child labour.
A Nestle spokesperson said, the lawsuit “does not advance the shared goal of ending child labour in the cocoa industry.”
