Well-meant exaggerations:

Last year we heard about 15,000 child slaves on Ivory Coast's cocoa plantations.

This month, the results of the first extensive survey of child labor in cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast and three other African nations were released by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, a nonprofit, multinational research organization that works in Africa. The survey, financed by the Agency for International Development and the United States Labor Department, found that almost all children working in cocoa fields were children of the plantation owners, not forced laborers.

As for child workers unrelated to the plantation owners, the study found that brokers had placed 2,100 foreign children, most of them ages 15 to 17, in Ivory Coast's cocoa plantations. Ninety-four percent of the children, the study says, knew the intermediary, or broker who hired them for the plantation work.

"The most frequent reason given for agreeing to leave with the intermediary was the promise of a better life," the report says. It adds: "None reported being forced against their will to leave their home abode. One hundred percent indicated that they had been informed in advance that they were going to work on cocoa farms."

(via Metafilter)