Mali's children in chocolate slavery

Malick Doumbia escaped, but many others have not

By BBC's Humphrey Hawksley in Mali

At a run-down police station in Sikasso, a small town in Mali, the files on missing children are endless.

The sad truth is that many have been kidnapped and sold into slavery. The going price is about US$30.

I might have got out but there are thousands of children still over there. If by your report, you can help free just one, you would be doing a good job

Former child slave Malick Doumbia

The local police chief is in no doubt where the children have gone. "It's definitely slavery over there," he said. "The kids have to work so hard they get sick and some even die."

In all, at least 15,000 children are thought to be over in the neighbouring Ivory Coast, producing cocoa which then goes towards making almost half of the world's chocolate.

Many are imprisoned on farms and beaten if they try to escape. Some are under 11 years old.

Save haven

Save the Children Fund has set up a transit centre in the hope that one day these children will come home from the cocoa, coffee and other farms on which they are working.

But so far they haven't. The place is empty, although one who managed to escape has a message worth listening to.

Mali's Save the Children Fund director, Salia Kante, has a message for shoppers - think about what you are buying

"I might have got out," said Malick Doumbia, "but there are thousands of children still over there. If by your report, you can help free just one, you would be doing a good job."

The work of this former slave ended up in shops around the world, as products that often do not specify exactly where they came from.

So Mali's Save the Children Fund director, Salia Kante, has a message for shoppers too - think about what you are buying.

"People who are drinking cocoa or coffee are drinking their blood," he said. "It is the blood of young children carrying 6kg of cocoa sacks so heavy that they have wounds all over their shoulders. It's really pitiful to see."

Slave trade

In the market, field worker Ibrahim Haidara asks people what they know about the slave trade.

Sikasso's police chief has records of many missing children

One man replied: "After one year you don't get money. If you ask for your money, you don't get money and you are beaten."

The slave children are taken from poor areas of Mali - the sons and daughters of street sellers, or the slum kids whose parents sell them for just a few dollars to work as plantation slaves in another country.

Yet the multi-nationals who make their living out of selling chocolate and coffee all around the world haven't contributed anything to the campaign here to stop the slavery trade taking place.