You and your kids can join schoolchildren across the US who are reversing the Halloween tradition by handing Fair Trade chocolate back to adults while Trick-or-Treating door-to-door. The candy will be accompanied by information about social justice issues in the chocolate industry, and how Fair Trade chocolate provides a solution to these concerns.

America In Solidarity is encouraging its volunteers to join us or call Stephanie Celt at Washington Fair Trade Coalition (206-227-3079) to do this in your own neighborhood.

While chocolate is sweet for us, it can be heartbreaking for the hundreds of thousands of child laborers that pick the cocoa that goes into some of our favorite treats. In 2001, the U.S. State Department, the International Labor Organization and others reported child slavery on many cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast, source of 43% of the worlds cocoa. Subsequent research by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture revealed some 284,000 children between the ages of 9 and 12 working in hazardous conditions on West African cocoa farms. Of these children, it was reported that some 12,000 child cocoa workers that had participated in the study were likely to have arrived in their situation as a result of child trafficking.

In 2001, this unacceptable practice caught the attention of the media and the government, and the American public began to voice their abhorrence of the use of child slave labor in the production of one of their most beloved treats: chocolate. In response, the US chocolate industry agreed (via the Harken-Engel Protocol) to voluntarily take steps to end child slavery on cocoa farms by July of 2005.

Unfortunately, this deadline has now passed, and the chocolate industry has failed to comply with the terms of this agreement. As a result, Global Exchange is spearheading a campaign that will provide an opportunity for communities nationwide to voice their concerns about the chocolate industry's abuse of children's rights.

The solution to unfair labor practices is FAIR TRADE (denoted by the "Fair Trade Certified" or "Fair Trade Federation" labels). Fair Trade guarantees producers the income they need to send their children to school and pay their workers fair wages, and provides consumers with a trusted guarantee that no forced or abusive child labor was used in the making of their products.