Hershey, Nestlé, Mars and Other Chocolate Makers Named in Child Slavery Class Action Lawsuit UD:

loyola llothta

loyola llothta

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Update:

Today, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Nestle, who argued they could not be sued for funding, overseeing, and profiting from a system of child slavery in Africa because the conduct did not occur on U.S. soil.
5:19 PM · Jun 17, 2021
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17 February 2021

Hershey, Nestlé, Mars and Other Chocolate Makers Named in Child Slavery Class Action Lawsuit
By Olivia Rosane


Many people give chocolates as a symbol of love on Valentine’s Day, but for some the popular candy is more bitter than sweet.

A human rights group filed a lawsuit Friday on behalf of eight Malian men who say they were trafficked across the border to the Cote D’Ivoire and forced to harvest cocoa for one or more of seven popular companies, including Mars, Nestlé and Hershey.

“Enough is enough!” IRAdvocates Executive Director Terry Collingsworth said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Allowing the enslavement of African children in 2021 to harvest cocoa for major multinational companies is outrageous and must end.”

The class action lawsuit was filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In addition to Nestlé, Hershey and Mars, the lawsuit also names Cargill, Mondelēz, Barry Callebaut and Olam. It marks the first time that a class action lawsuit of this type has been brought against cocoa companies in a U.S. court, The Guardian reported. The eight men, who are now young adults, seek damages for forced labor and compensation for the fact that the companies inflicted emotional harm and improper supervision while getting rich at their expense.

Child labor is a major and ongoing problem for cocoa production in West Africa.


NORC at the University of Chicago found that 1.56 million children were harvesting cocoa in Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana during the 2018 and 2019 growing season, up 14 percent from 2015, IRAdvocates said. At the same time, 1.48 million children undertook dangerous tasks while working.

The defendant companies have long pledged to end the use of child slavery in their supply chains, but continually extend their deadlines for meeting this goal. In 2001, they signed the “Harkin-Engle Protocol” promising to end child labor by 2005; more than 15 years later, they are now promising to reduce the use of child labor by 70 percent by 2025.

“By giving themselves this series of extensions, these companies are admitting they ARE using child slaves and will continue to do so until they decide it’s in their interests to stop,” Collingsworth said. “Based on the objective record of twenty years of the failed Harkin-Engle Protocol, these companies will continue to profit from child slavery until they are forced to stop. The purpose of this lawsuit is to force them to stop.”

The plaintiffs tell stories of being recruited in Mali under false pretenses; being trafficked across the border; and then being forced to work on cocoa farms without pay, travel documents or any knowledge of when they would be allowed to leave, The Guardian explained. While the companies named in the lawsuit do not directly own the farms where the children worked, the lawsuit contends that they knowingly benefited from their labor because they chose to contract from growers who could offer lower prices because they did not pay adult wages or provide adequate safety equipment.

The World Cocoa Foundation, to which all of the defendants belong, spoke out against child labor but argued that the responsibility for ending it fell to the government of the Côte d’Ivoir.

“The cocoa and chocolate industry has zero tolerance for any instances of forced labor in the supply chain,” World Cocoa Foundation President Richard Scobey said in a statement reported by Business Insider. “The government of Côte d’Ivoire has a comprehensive legal framework in place to pursue, arrest and bring to justice those who traffic children or adults.”

The individual companies gave similar statements decrying child labor but arguing that the solution involved multiple stakeholders acting together, and not targeted lawsuits. But IRAdvocates sees the lawsuits as a means of forcing companies to actually be a part of the solution.

This is the second lawsuit that IRAdvocates has filed against major chocolate brands over child labor issues. Another, filed against Nestlé and Cargill under the Alien Tort Statute, was argued before the Supreme Court in December of 2020. During the arguments, the companies said they were not liable for child slavery under international law, IRAdvocates said.

“n filing this new case we want these companies to know we will use every possible legal tool available to make them stop abusing child slaves,” Collingsworth said in a statement. “We call upon the companies to work with us [to] solve this problem, rather than spend millions in legal fees to fight an uncontestable fact – the cocoa industry is dependent upon child labor.”
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Hershey, Nestlé, Mars and Other Chocolate Makers Named in Child Slavery Class Action Lawsuit
 
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loyola llothta

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Update:


US HIGH COURT SIDES WITH CORPORATE GIANTS NESTLE AND CARGILL
By Julia Conley, Common Dreams.
June 18, 2021
| EDUCATE!


Above Photo: Leigh Vogel/WireImage.

‘A Dangerous Precedent.’
A lawyer for six men who alleged they were victims of human trafficking said the corporations “should be held accountable for abetting a system of child slavery.”

Human rights advocates Thursday denounced a Supreme Court decision in favor of the U.S. corporate giants Nestlé USA and Cargill, which were sued more than a decade ago by six men who say the two companies were complicit in child trafficking and profited when the men were enslaved on cocoa farms as children.

The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against the plaintiffs, saying they had not proven the companies’ activities in the U.S. were sufficiently tied to the alleged child trafficking. The companies had argued that they could not be sued in the U.S. for activities that took place in West Africa.

Neal Katyal, former acting solicitor general under the Obama administration, represented the two companies and also argued that they could not be sued for complicity in child trafficking because they are corporations, not individuals.

Writing at Slate last December, Mark Joseph Stern called Katyal’s position “radical” and “extreme,” detailing the nine justice’s skepticism about his defense of the companies—but the court ultimately sided with him. The plaintiffs, who are from Mali and say they are survivors of child trafficking and slavery in Côte d’Ivoire, filed their lawsuit under the Alien Tort Statute, an 18th century law which allows federal courts to hear civil actions filed by foreigners regarding offenses “committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”

In recent years the Court has limited when the law can be invoked in court, arguing it cannot be used to file a lawsuit when the offense was committed “almost entirely abroad,” according to the New York Times.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that Nestlé and Cargill have total control over the production of cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire, where child labor is widespread and where the men said they were forced to work long hours and to sleep in locked shacks at night.

The U.S. Department of Labor recently reported that the use of child labor on family farms in cocoa-growing areas of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana increased from 31 percent to 45 percent between 2008 and 2019.

The corporations “should be held accountable for abetting a system of child slavery,” said Paul Hoffman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in October 2018 that Nestlé and Cargill couldn’t avoid the lawsuits, but writing for the Supreme Court majority on Thursday, Justice Clarence Thomas said the plaintiffs had failed to establish that the companies’ conduct “occurred in the United States … even if other conduct occurred abroad” and that the companies made “major operational decisions” in the United States.

EarthRights International, which filed an amicus brief with the court on behalf of the plaintiffs, called the ruling “a giant step backward for U.S. leadership on international law and protecting human rights.”

“The ruling implies that U.S. corporations whose executives decide, from comfortable American boardrooms, to profit from murder, torture, and slavery abroad cannot be sued in U.S. federal courts for violating international law,” said Marco Simons, general counsel for the organization. “This ruling has disturbing implications for future victims of human rights abuses seeking justice against businesses in U.S. courts. This ruling also sets a dangerous precedent, giving corporations impunity for profiting from human rights abuses.”

Organizer Bree Newsome noted the irony of the ruling on the day the U.S. Congress passed legislation recognizing Juneteenth—the day Union soldiers arrived in Texas and informed Black people who had been enslaved that slavery had ended with the Civil War.

“In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal today to protect victims of corporate human rights abuses, it is imperative that Congress take action,” said Simons. “We call on Congress to clarify U.S. courts’ responsibilities to enforce international law, reassert U.S. leadership on human rights, and provide remedies to victims of the most serious human rights abuses by enacting binding legislation that holds corporations accountable for violating human rights.”
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link:
US High Court Sides With Corporate Giants Nestle And Cargill - PopularResistance.Org
 
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6CertsAndAMovie

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loyola llothta said:
Update:


US HIGH COURT SIDES WITH CORPORATE GIANTS NESTLE AND CARGILL
By Julia Conley, Common Dreams.
June 18, 2021
| EDUCATE!


Above Photo: Leigh Vogel/WireImage.

‘A Dangerous Precedent.’
A lawyer for six men who alleged they were victims of human trafficking said the corporations “should be held accountable for abetting a system of child slavery.”

Human rights advocates Thursday denounced a Supreme Court decision in favor of the U.S. corporate giants Nestlé USA and Cargill, which were sued more than a decade ago by six men who say the two companies were complicit in child trafficking and profited when the men were enslaved on cocoa farms as children.



link:
US High Court Sides With Corporate Giants Nestle And Cargill - PopularResistance.Org
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@KingZimbabwe smh come get this rep
 
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IShotTheSheriff

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Funny thing is too, well maybe funny isn’t the world but maybe ironically enough...

If you enjoy real natural chocolate you don’t buy that Nestle overly processed crap anyway...
 
loyola llothta

loyola llothta

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skylove4 said:
I’ll protest with my wallet. I refuse to buy any their products going foward . I need to look up all the brands they own.
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SCOTUS just ruled in favor of Nestle in a case where six citizens of Mali say Nestle facilitated human rights abuses in Ivory Coast where they were enslaved as children. If you don't want to support slavery, here's a list of Nestle's brands:





1:06 PM · Jun 17, 2021
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