Goldenhorse's Kirsten Morrell Puckers Up for Oxfam

Goldenhorse singer Kirsten Morrell today showed where her heart was on Valentine's Day by puckering up and adding her lips to Oxfam's Chocolate Kiss petition outside Nestlé's Auckland headquarters.

Calling on Nestlé to help kiss poverty goodbye, Oxfam presented the chocolate giant with an unconventional Valentine's gift - over 7,000 petition cards from New Zealanders calling on the chocolate industry to sweeten its cocoa sourcing practices and switch to fair trade.

"Poverty is wide-spread amongst cocoa farmers in West Africa and even more worrying is the use of slave labour on some cocoa farms," says Oxfam Fair Trade Coordinator Linda Broom. "We're asking the chocolate industry to pay fair, stable prices so that farmers can work their way out of poverty through fair trade."

Nestlé is currently being sued by a US labour rights organisation for the alleged involvement in the trafficking, torture and forced labour of children on the farms that supply Nestlé's cocoa. It is estimated that up to 12,000 children are working as slaves in West Africa (IITA, 2002).

"I don't want the products that I buy for myself to be tarnished with slavery and poverty," explains Morrell. "As consumers in New Zealand we don't always realise that we have a very powerful voice – we can make the change."

"It's not enough to be cynical anymore – fair trade works. We have the information, it's there. We just need to use it."

Editors Notes • On 14th July 2005, Wiggins, Childs, Quinn & Pantazis (a civil-rights firm) and the International Labour Rights Fund filed a lawsuit against Nestle and others on behalf of a class of children from Mali who were allegedly trafficked to the Ivory Coast where they worked as slave on cocoa farms.

• Under the 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol, key stakeholders in the cocoa industry (including Nestle, Cadbury-Schweppes and Mars) committed to eliminating the use of abusive child labour in cocoa growing. The Protocol promised to develop global, industry-wide standards and independent monitoring, reporting and public certification to identify and eliminate any usage of the worst forms of child labour in the growing and processing of cocoa beans by 1st July 2005. But by 1st July 2005 there had been limited progress in the design and implementation of a monitoring or certification program and the industry has extended its deadline by a further 3 years to July 2008.

• According to the International Cocoa Organisation, over 70% of the world's cocoa is grown in West Africa and the Ivory Coast produces 44% of the world's cocoa.

• A 2002 study of cocoa farming in the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture found that:

o Nearly 12,000 child labourers in the cocoa industry in the Ivory Coast had no relatives in the area, suggesting they were trafficked as slaves.

o Over 200,000 children were engaged in hazardous tasks (such as the use of machetes and exposure to pesticides without protection) on cocoa farms in the region. o The average annual earnings from cocoa farming range from US$30 per person to US$110 per person in the region.

• Lack of access to education, healthcare and clean water are common problems faced by cocoa farming communities in West Africa.

• Oxfam New Zealand is promoting fair trade in New Zealand, but has no commercial interest in the sale of fair trade products.

ENDS

© Scoop Media