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The major international cocoa company organizations, NATIONAL CONFECTIONERS ASSOCIATION, WORLD COCOA FOUNDATION, CAOBTSCO, and EUROPEAN COCOA ASSOCIATION, just filed an Amicus brief in the Court of appeals (see link below) asking the Court to rehear our recent victory against Nestle and Cargill. These companies all signed or endorsed the "Harkin-Engle Protocol" in 2001 promising to end child labor in their supply chains.

In recently published remarks of a July 17, 2018 meeting of the World Cocoa Foundation, an association of multinational cocoa companies, including Nestle, Cargill, Barry Callebaut, Mars and Mondelez, Vice President Tim McCoy admitted that the goal of reducing child slavery in the West Africa Cocoa sector 70% by the year 2020 will not be met. This is a direct admission that these companies are knowingly profiting from child slavery.

IRAdvocates is delighted to announce that their clients in Quinteros, et al., v. DynCorp, et al., Case No. 1:07-cv-01042 (ESH) reached a final settlement of their claims with the DynCorp defendants. This case was first filed in 2001 and involved the controversial fumigations of Plan Colombia. The more than 2,000 individual Plaintiffs are all farmers and fishermen who live on the Ecuador side of the Colombia-Ecuador border. They filed suit against DynCorp, the contractor that implemented the coca eradication fumigations in Colombia on behalf of the U.S. Department of State.

On this day in 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world," the declaration begins. International Rights Advocates is dedicated to defending Human Rights across the world and creating accountability when those rights are violated.

A drop in global cocoa prices threatens to undermine efforts to stamp out child labor in Ghana and Ivory Coast, the world's two biggest growers, as falling incomes could force farmers to send their children to work, charities said on Monday.