The Stop Slavery Award is an initiative from the Thomson Reuters Foundation that honours corporations that go above and beyond their peers in the effort to eradicate forced labour, the worst forms of child labour, and other forms of slavery.
Tony’s Chocolonely has won this year’s award after judges praised the Dutch ethical brand for its willingness to acknowledge and confront entrenched challenges in the cocoa sector, “including deliberately working in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire to improve supply chains and spotlight the root causes of modern slavery and child labour".
It is estimated that there are currently 1.56 million children working illegally and at least 30,000 instances of modern slavery on cocoa farms in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, where 60% of the world’s cocoa comes from.
Systemic poverty
Tony’s Chocolonely claims the reason for this is because of the unequally divided cocoa value chain which means farmers are living in systemic poverty - the root cause of these issues.
On its latest achievement, the Foundation commented: "Tony’s Chocolonely has won this year’s Stop Slavery Enterprise Award for Goods and Service Companies for their standout commitment to transparency – with the confectionary company commended for reporting on both its positive and negative impacts, as well as its child labour monitoring and remediation activities. “
Established in The Netherlands in 2005, Tony’s Chocolonely has been on a mission to make '100% slave-free the norm in chocolate'. By winning the Stop Slavery Award, Tony's hopes to inspire more companies to join in the fight to end modern slavery and child labour in the chocolate industry by joining Tony's Open Chain; an initiative that invites companies to take full responsibility of their supply chains by adopting Tony’s way of ethical and sustainable sourcing.
Henk Jan, CEO of Tony’s Chocolonely, said: “The vision of Tony’s Chocolonely is 100% slave-free chocolate. Not just our chocolate, but all chocolate worldwide. This is our raison d’être. We believe that all companies carry a responsibility to make the world nicer. We are over the moon to receive the prestigious Stop Slavery Award. It is an important nod to our roadmap towards change and a confirmation that we are on the right track to achieve our mission. Let’s make impact together.”