CNN’s team produced a moving 23-minute documentary and companion article featuring FTS co-founder Kevin Bales, who traveled undercover to Mauritania for his groundbreaking book Disposable People. 

CNN’s documentary coverage is a rare look into a little-covered corner of West Africa.

Free the Slaves co-founder Kevin Bales was on CNN last Friday. He was interviewed by Richard Quest about the state of slavery in the cocoa industry. Just over 10 years ago, in September 2001, Free the Slaves helped broker the historic Harkin-Engel Protocol.

Otherwise known as the “Cocoa Protocol,” the agreement marked the first time in the 250-year history of the anti-slavery movement that a global industry took responsibility for slavery in its supply chain. Chocolate companies, several NGOs, international labor organizations, Senator Harkin, Representative Engel, and the governments of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire all signed on.

The agreement was inspired by a growing awareness of slavery and other human rights abuses on the cocoa farms of West Africa. Free the Slaves helped shed light on these abuses in the Peabody award-winning documentary, “Slavery: A Global Investigation” which aired in 2001.

In the CNN interview above, Kevin Bales reflects on what has happened in the 10 years since the protocol was signed:

“I was proud to sign it and not least because there is something historic about an entire industry coming together to pool their funds to address the issue of child slavery and adult slavery in cocoa… But I am disappointed. To a large part it’s a resource question. It’s about the fact that while several million dollars a year are moving from the chocolate industry into work on the ground in West Africa, it’s simply not enough to meet the size of the problem… I believe that any time anyone happens to be in slavery, that’s a serious problem.”

Bales added that, while it is important to continue to pressure the chocolate industry to keep their supply chains free of slavery, there are other cocoa-using industries—like cosmetics and food manufacturers—that have not “taken part in dealing with the problem in their source material.”

Check out Free the Slaves’ mini-documentary “Becoming a Slavery-Free Business: Removing Slavery from Product Supply Chains” here!

Follow CNN’s Freedom Project—a yearlong initiative to cover the modern slavery, and the movement to end it—here!

CNN covered how Free the Slaves staff and partners work to alleviate modern-day slavery despite challenges like extreme poverty. Ghana director Emmanuel Otoo shares his gratitude for his mother’s choices and his motivation to continue his work. “We observe a lot of situations currently where out of poverty, out of need, out of desire to give their children the basic necessities, parents tend to traffic their children – give them out or sell them out,” he told CNN. “So I compare this to our relationship with our mother that in spite of the difficult times, in spite of the lack, the need, and the want, she did not give us out. She could’ve done that, but she did not.” The story also touches on our recent trip to Congo. You can find the report on the extent of slavery in the Congo mines and the full video here

CNN’s Freedom Project reminds us that while the internet can be wonderful for awareness it is also a tool for trafficking people in slavery. It’s shocking to hear that in 2010 slave traders made more than Google, Nike , and Starbucks combined! It’s important to be aware of the ways our participation can affect the issue. Let’s make technology a tool for positive change!