The Dark Side of Chocolate

With the intention to put an end to child trafficking combined with the obligation to eradicate the forced labour in the cocoa industry by the year 2008, in 2001, representatives from all the big chocolate companies signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol, an international agreement also known as the "Cocoa Protocol". The journey into the obscure world of cocoa production starts from Germany, in Cologne's ISM event which is the world's largest trade fair for chocolate products, confectionery and snacks, in an attempt to ask a simple question: where does your chocolate come from? As a result, the crew of journalists following the traffickers' tracks, fly to Mali in Africa equipped with concealed cameras and fake identities, to record how children ranging from 7 to 15 years old, with the promise of paid work, they are transported to the borders and eventually, they are sold to the farmers in the plantations. After a stop at the Ivory Coast, the world's leading cocoa producer, the expose concludes in Geneva at the International Labour Office, to bring the matter up with the use of raw material containing testimonies from liberated children, activists and traffickers that reveal the bitter taste of our indispensable chocolate.