Chocolate, Children and Responsibility: What Are We Really Supporting?

Today, BBC Children in Need is on air, joined by Cadbury — part of Mondelēz International — to raise funds for children and young people in the UK.Cadbury’s campaign promises a £150,000 donation from its limited-edition “Care Bags” (Cadbury Dairy Milk Buttons and Caramel Nibbles) to support children affected by poverty, mental-health challenges, and inequality across the country (BBC Children in Need, 2025).

On the surface, this sounds like kindness in action — chocolate for a cause.But what happens when we look beneath the glossy wrapping?

The real cost of cocoa

Around 70 % of the world’s cocoa comes from West Africa, with Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire at the centre of global supply. Research funded by the U.S. Department of Labor found that 1.56 million children in these two countries are engaged in hazardous cocoa work (University of Chicago NORC, 2020). Some wield machetes, carry heavy loads, or are exposed to chemicals — all dangerous and all robbing children of education and safety.

Cadbury’s parent company, Mondelēz International, runs the Cocoa Life programme, launched in 2012 to improve farmer livelihoods and tackle child labour. Yet investigations show gaps between claims and reality. A 2022 documentary filmed children as young as ten working on farms supplying Cadbury in Ghana (The Guardian, 2022). The company itself concedes it cannot guarantee that its chocolate is free from child labour, relying instead on a “mass-balance” system that mixes traceable and untraceable beans (IDH Sustainable Trade, 2021).

These findings are not distant statistics. Our own partners working on the ground in Ghana — directly with cocoa-farming families and children — describe these corporate claims as largely existing on paper. They describe poverty so entrenched that children still help on farms after school or instead of school, because survival leaves little choice. It is a reality invisible to consumers but all too familiar to those who live it.

Mondelēz also faces legal action in the U.S., accused of misleading consumers with its Cocoa Life logo by implying fully responsible sourcing where this cannot be verified (Bakery & Snacks, 2024). And it is one of several chocolate corporations named in landmark child slavery lawsuits filed by International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) on behalf of children trafficked from Mali and forced to work on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire (IRAdvocates, Ghana Cocoa Case). These cases allege that companies such as Mondelēz, Cargill, Mars, Hershey, and Nestlé knowingly profited from forced child labour and failed to take adequate steps to prevent it. Shareholders have also filed resolutions pressing Mondelēz to publish measurable targets to end child labour in its cocoa supply chain by 2025 (ICCR, 2024).

Even now, company reports cover only about two-thirds of sourcing communities.

The Harkin–Engel Protocol: promises made, promises delayed

In 2001, under mounting evidence of child slavery and forced labour in cocoa, the world’s major chocolate producers — including Cadbury — signed the Harkin–Engel Protocol. Named after U.S. Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Eliot Engel, it was a voluntary agreement to eliminate the worst forms of child and forced labour from cocoa production in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. By signing, the industry acknowledged that child slavery and forced labour already existed in its supply chains.

The timeline tells its own story:

• 2001: Promise to certify cocoa as free from the worst forms of child labour.

• 2005: Original deadline — missed.

• 2008 → 2010 → 2015 → 2020: Each time extended, each time restated as “complex.”

• By 2020, not only were targets unmet, but child labour had increased in parts of West Africa.

After more than two decades, the same companies still buy cocoa from systems where exploitation persists.These are not failures of time or resources — they are failures of will.

So when Cadbury launches a campaign to help children here, the question lingers:

What became of the promise to protect children there?

The BBC’s own standard

BBC Children in Need’s Modern Slavery Statement (2024) states that the charity works to “identify, prevent and address modern slavery across our organisation and supply chains” and has “a responsibility to ensure modern slavery is not present in any form.”(BBC Children in Need, 2024)

How does that align with partnering a multinational whose cocoa supply chain remains linked to child slavery and forced labour?

Can a campaign truly honour the BBC’s own principles while sourcing its goodwill from a system still tainted by exploitation?

Seeking accountability

In September, I wrote to BBC Children in Need’s Chief Executive, Simon Antrobus, raising concerns about the charity’s partnership with Cadbury (Mondelēz International). I outlined the contradiction of funding UK children’s projects with profits from chocolate linked to poverty and child labour, and shared testimonies from cocoa-growing families who describe Mondelēz’s claims as “only on paper.”

The charity’s Supporter Experience Manager replied that due diligence had been carried out and that Mondelēz’s Cocoa Life programme was reviewed and considered satisfactory. No mention was made of the active lawsuits or the realities reported by farming communities.

I followed up directly with Simon Antrobus, who acknowledged my message on 8 October but has not since responded.

This silence speaks to a wider problem — a reliance on corporate self-assessment instead of genuine accountability. Responsibility requires more than procedures and PR statements; it begins with listening to the people whose lives sustain the system.

Then and now: from Colston to corporate giving — the repetition of a colonial pattern ?

Edward Colston (1636 – 1721) is now infamous for amassing wealth through the Royal African Company, which enslaved and transported tens of thousands of African men, women and children. He later donated portions of that fortune to Bristol’s schools, churches and almshouses, securing his reputation as a benefactor. For centuries, his philanthropy was celebrated while the violence that funded it was conveniently forgotten.

But Colston was not alone. Across the British Empire, merchant families, shipping investors, sugar magnates and plantation owners used profits from slavery, colonial extraction and forced labour to fund local civic projects — hospitals, museums, universities, scholarships and almshouses. These gestures of charity laundered reputations, converting exploitation abroad into moral status at home.

This pattern — the conversion of suffering into philanthropy — did not end with abolition. It continues today in subtler, corporate forms. Large multinationals generate enormous profits from global supply chains rooted in historical inequalities: poverty in producer nations, cheap labour, land depletion and weak regulation. Having benefited from those systems, they then present themselves as agents of compassion through highly visible acts of giving.

So we must ask: is corporate philanthropy that relies on extraction and exploitation really any different from the “benevolence” of the colonial past?

When a company still sourcing cocoa from communities trapped in poverty donates to support children in the UK, are we seeing progress — or the same moral equation rewritten for the modern age?

• Both involve profits built on human cost, disguised by charitable acts at home.

• Both create a comforting narrative for the public: look at what good we’re doing, rather than look at where the harm begins.

• Both reinforce unequal power structures — those who extract, decide; those who labour, remain voiceless.

This is why Colston’s story still matters. His name was carved on buildings because philanthropy obscured violence. Today, the names are different — corporate rather than aristocratic — but the principle endures: generosity as a shield against accountability.

So, as chocolate brands partner with national charities to raise funds for children here, we might ask:

• Is this partnership a break from colonial history, or an echo of it?

• Does it challenge global inequality, or repackage it for easier consumption?

• When we applaud generosity without questioning its source, are we helping to end exploitation — or helping to forget it?

What Do You Think?

Should 'BBC Children in Need' partner with companies which have child slavery and forced labour in their supply chain?

• Yes
• No
• I am undecided

There isn’t a single answer to any of this — it’s complicated, and it matters that we explore it together. I’m genuinely interested in hearing other people’s thoughts and views on this — and would especially welcome insights from parents, carers, teachers and young people themselves.

If you have children or young people in your life, try talking with them about this story in an age-appropriate way. Their questions and ideas often help us see more clearly than we might on our own.

Here are a few prompts to start the conversation:

• What do you think about helping children here in the UK through products that may harm children elsewhere?

• Does this kind of fundraising feel generous, or does it raise more difficult questions?

• How would the children supported by BBC Children in Need feel if they knew the chocolate raising money for them is linked to the suffering of families in cocoa-growing regions?

• Should charities partner with companies whose supply chains still involve exploitation?

• What might a truly responsible partnership look like?

• What needs to change so that all children — wherever they are — are treated with equal dignity?

  
  

Please feel free to share your reflections in the comments below or send them privately if you prefer. I’d love to include a range of perspectives, including those of children and young people, in future posts.

The story of chocolate, like the story of Colston, asks us not just what we give, but what we’re willing to see.