To the Editor,
We often contribute to the well-being of people in the underdeveloped world. This is true with fair-trade coffee and is increasingly the case with other fair-trade consumer goods, such as chocolate.
The purchase of fair-trade-certified products has important consequences. It allows many producers to receive reasonable prices for their products, and numerous workers to climb out of poverty. It also has positive impacts on the environment.
About 15,000 slave children works on farms and cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast, which supplies 35 per cent of the world’s cocoa. In Western Africa, they are 300,000 children under 14 working on such plantations, doing hard and dangerous labour.
Overall, 14 billion workers live from cocoa plantations, several of them earning around $300US per year for their work and production.
Young and old, we should all work toward a world where solidarity is at the heart of economic development. A fair trade Easter would be an immense step in this direction.
Bruno Marquis,
Gatineau, QC
