Last week, Terry Collingsworth passed away. He was an exceptional lawyer, and most people in cocoa probably knew his name. If you worked for a company, you may have dreaded hearing from him.
Collingsworth is best known for his 20-year legal battle against some of the biggest chocolate companies over child labour in West Africa.
For CocoaRadar readers, his central work concerned claims that Nestlé and Cargill aided and abetted child slavery in Côte d’Ivoire. Six Malian plaintiffs alleged that they had been trafficked there as children and forced to work on cocoa farms. On 17 June 2021, the US Supreme Court reversed a ruling that had allowed their Alien Tort Statute claims to proceed.
It found that the alleged corporate activity in the US was insufficient to bring the overseas conduct within the statute’s reach. The decision did not establish the companies’ liability for the alleged abuses.
Advertisement
Collingsworth had an unusual start to his career: he operated an overhead crane in a copper mill in Cleveland. Along the way, he took part-time college classes, studied law and later taught it at university.
Early on, he had the opportunity to visit factories in Asia that supplied American companies, where he witnessed labour rights violations and abuse.
Legendary Legal Battles
His legal battles with the big chocolate corporations were legendary and frustrating. As a human rights lawyer, he lacked the resources and deep pockets of his rivals. He also sued the US government for failing to enforce a law that bans imports made with forced child labour. He lost.
Anthony Myers
The image of a boxer comes to mind: light on his feet, ready to fight, tireless, coming from the left, the right, from every angle. Later, he discovered another powerful weapon: the media.
The media are happy to pour oil on the fire, because a headline about children working on a cocoa farm in West Africa is incredibly powerful and, not unimportantly, good for the numbers.
Our industry has several watchdogs like Collingsworth, each with their own style and ways, but all sharing his goal of fighting for a better world. As for the people who say they never look at the chocolate scorecards or the critical posts and reports that come out regularly: I’m sure they do. And if not, their colleagues certainly do.
So why do so many companies still choose to close the door on watchdogs?
Most companies see a watchdog as ‘them’. The enemy. Why would you hand over important company data to someone you don’t trust?
Part of this is what psychologists call loss aversion: the fear of damage weighs more heavily than the prospect of a reward. Inside a company, opening up to a watchdog also needs approval from legal, communications and sales, which makes it a complicated and tense process.
Saying no is an easier option. If the request isn’t legally binding, why air your dirty laundry in public? Especially if competitors stay silent and are happy for company X to take the rap for human rights violations.
The Identity Layer
Then there is a personal identity layer. Most people are proud of the company they work for. The company that helped them build their career. The status. The life. It is part of who they are, so when the company is under attack, they feel attacked too.
And what happens when you feel attacked? You protect yourself, right? How?
You go into fight, flight, freeze or fawn mode. In all of these, you stop listening to the other side.
As much as I understand the rationale, I wonder whether it is the most pragmatic business strategy in the long run.
A company that shares nothing risks being named the chocolate villain, which may be the worst outcome of all.
For years, the media (and some brands) have told consumers who the heroes and villains of the chocolate world are. Once a company is cast as the bad guy, it's hard to shake off.
More and more consumers choose the brands that, in their eyes, do good. And it is not just the outside world; internally, things get shaky too. Staff get uneasy, and investors ask more questions. Outside, customers get nervous as well: afraid they will be next, they may stop buying from the company.
Advertisement
That is when a closed attitude starts to cost real money.
Opening up to critics or activists creates vulnerability, and for many companies, that is new territory. It means daring to admit that not everything is under control, and being willing to listen and look honestly at what needs to improve, before even knowing how to fix it.
Fair Labor Association
In 2011, Nestlé invited the Fair Labor Association to investigate its cocoa supply chain in Côte d’Ivoire. Its findings, published the following year, were painful: children working on farms, injuries from machetes, long hours and risks of forced labour. But they made the problems visible and helped spur the development of a Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation System, which many companies have since adopted.
The energy that went into defending its business became the fuel for building something new, and the focus that had made people defensive turned into pride in trying to fix the problem. The thing they were most afraid to show became part of their strongest story. Tony’s Chocolonely took the same route and went a step further with its Tony’s Open Chain model, and it has served that company well, for example.
Did the pressure of watchdogs help here? I think so.
It can’t be a coincidence that Collingsworth had been banging on Nestlé’s door for years before the company opened up. His approach was to fight the fight; he spent his career forcing the door from the outside.
What I hope we can learn is that a door opens a lot faster from the inside.
- Terry Collingsworth, 1956–2026. Founder and executive director of International Rights Advocates.
Marika van Santvoort has been working in cocoa & chocolate since 2014, with a focus on responsible sourcing, innovation and farmer impact. In this monthly column she shares her own perspective on what is really moving in the sector; what is being said, what is not, why it matters and what it means for the industry. |
- Read more articles on CocoaRadar from Marika here:
