Criticism
In 2001, the Child Labor Coalition, a collection of advocacy groups focusing on child labor issues in the US and worldwide, criticized the protocol for only addressing Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. It suggested extending the protocol to the whole world, because exploitative practices were also reported in the cocoa industries in Brazil and Indonesia. The Child Labor Coalition also recommended that the chocolate industry set the price of chocolate so that the producers make enough money to fairly compensate their workers.
In 2011, ten years after implementation, it was unclear if the protocol had any effect in reducing child labor. One Payson Center researcher claimed few of the protocol commitments have been implemented, but the ICI claimed five of the six articles have been completed and they are actively working on the sixth.
In 2012, Miki Mistrati, creator of the award-winning documentary, The Dark Side of Chocolate, claimed the protocol is just “a document and politics” because there has been no progress. He thinks that the same issues will be present in five years and that changes will not come through the protocol, but instead from consumers who demand change.
Read more about this topic: Harkin-Engel Protocol
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“Parents sometimes feel that if they don’t criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn’t make people want to change; it makes them defensive.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)