They are lethal luxuries. Those innocuous and delicious-looking chocolates given to loved ones all over the world on Valentine's Day are, more often than not, the result of incredible human suffering. Their main ingredient, cocoa, is often produced by child slaves in Africa.

"It is absolutely certain that the box of chocolates you got for Valentine's was produced by slave labour if it does not have a fair trade label," Steve Chalke of Stop the Traffik, an anti-trafficking NGO, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on the sidelines of a United Nations forum on human trafficking in Vienna.

When people think of human trafficking, they primarily think about the sex trade. But they forget that trafficking is a factor permeating all trades - be it sex, agriculture, domestic services, manufacture of fabrics - or chocolate.

"Chocolate is a prime example - it is cheap, and it is something many people buy - it makes the otherwise overwhelming statistics more personal," Chalke said.

According to UN estimates, at least 2.5 million people are exploited by forced labour at any point in time, a majority of them children.

In Ivory Coast, which produces 43 percent of the world's cocoa, about 12,000 boys from countries like Mali or Togo work as slaves on cocoa farms, the UN said. Activists put the number as high as 200,000.

"Even if it were ten, it would be ten too many," Chalke said of the modern-day slaves who are often as young as nine years of age.

The parents of those children are duped by the traffickers into believing their boys would receive an honest job, regular pay and an education, none of which ever happens.

Child slaves on the farm face appalling working conditions with 12 to 14 hours of severe manual labour, cutting down cocoa pods using big knives or machetes, thereby risking severe injuries which can often maim them permanently, Global Exchange, a fair trade organisation said. Some are also killed and many are beaten or abused.

 1 2 Next >