NewsTracker Answers for week of June 21, 2021

Q: The U.S. Supreme Court last week threw out a lawsuit that claimed food giants Nestle and Cargill knowingly bought cocoa beans - the raw ingredient for your chocolate bars and treats - from farms in Ivory Coast that used child slave labor. Where is Ivory Coast?

Circle the area on this map


Q: Claiming the companies perpetuated that slave trade to keep cocoa prices low, six men said they were trafficked as children from Mali and forced to work as slaves on farms in Ivory Coast. Mali is . . .

A. North of Ivory Coast

B. East of Ivory Coast

C. South of Ivory Coast

D. West of Ivory Coast


A. Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire, is bordered by Mali to the northwest, Burkina Faso to the northeast, Ghana to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the south and Liberia and Guinea to the west. Ivory Coast and Ghana supply about 70% of the world’s cocoa beans, and employ 1.56 million children - many as young as five - in the back-breaking work of harvesting the beans.


Q: Agriculture employs most of the world’s child and forced laborers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Where else do children work in farm fields?

A. Bangladesh

B. Mexico

C. United States

D. All of the above


D. Children work in agriculture at the expense of their education and health in poor countries like Ivory Coast. In the United States, children at the age of 12 can legally work unlimited hours on farms of any size with parental permission, as long as they don’t miss school. There is no minimum age for small or family farms. More than half of work-related deaths among U.S. children occur in agriculture, which employs only 5.5% of the nation’s child workers.


Q: While Ivory Coast and Ghana are poor, their farms bring in workers from much poorer neighboring nations like Mali. Based on gross domestic product per person, the world’s poorest nations are in Africa. What is the poorest nation outside the continent?

A. Afghanistan

B. Haiti

C. North Korea

D. Yemen


C. According to the CIA World Factbook, North Korea is the poorest nation outside of Africa. However, several African nations also ranked better than Afghanistan, Haiti and Yemen. Just last week, North Korea’s leaders warned of severe food shortages this year.


Q: One in four of all victims of trafficking are children involved in forced labor. According to Danish researchers, a child slave in West Africa can be bought for as little as . . .

A. $3

B. $37

C. $370

D. $3,700


B. Up to 10 million children are trapped in modern forms of child slavery, according to The World Counts which cited the $37 price tag for a child in Ghana. The Supreme Court ruled there was no evidence that decisions made in the United States led to the forced child labor in Ivory Coast, even though Nestle and Cargill provided the farms with planning, technical and financial resources.