Nestlé United States, Inc. v. Doe. 141 S. Ct. 1931.

On June 17, 2021, the United States Supreme Court reversed and remanded a suit filed against Nestlé USA and Cargill under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) for lack of jurisdiction. This case has already garnered attention over the nature of the dispute (child slaves in Africa), the Supreme Court's treatment of jurisdiction under the ATS, and the finding shared by five of the nine Supreme Court justices that domestic corporations can potentially be sued under the ATS. This analysis focuses on the child slavery and global supply chain aspects of the decision.

U.S. Supreme Court Holds Claims Against U.S. Corporations for Aiding and Abetting Child Slavery Impermissibly Extraterritorial, Declines to Resolve Domestic Corporate Liability

In Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe, et al., former child slaves who were trafficked into Côte d'Ivoire to work on cocoa farms filed suit under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) against U.S.-based companies that purchase cocoa from and provide other support to the farms, alleging that the companies aided and abetted child slavery. By an 8–1 vote, the Supreme Court held that the case involved an impermissible extraterritorial application of the ATS under the Court's precedent in Kiobel. The Court declined to resolve whether domestic corporations may be held liable under the ATS, although five justices across several opinions expressed the view that such corporations are not immune from ATS suits. The question of whether the Court should ever create new causes of action under the ATS prompted significant debate, with three justices suggesting that they would overrule Sosa v. Álvarez-Machain and a fourth indicating that there are strong arguments to reject judicial creation of any new ATS causes of action.

Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe (U.S. Sup. Ct.)

On June 17, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its opinion in Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe, a human rights case brought under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), alleging that U.S. companies aided and abetted child slavery in Ivory Coast. By a vote of 8 to 1, the Court held that the claims were impermissibly extraterritorial because nearly all the conduct occurred abroad. The Court left open the possibility that the implied cause of action under the ATS applies to U.S. corporations.

Cocoa and Child Slavery in West Africa

The ongoing scholarship on child slavery in cocoa farming in West Africa is examined by illustrating major developments in the field. Slavery was a mainstay of the labor force in early West Africa cocoa farming, especially in Sao Tomé and Príncipe. Whereas slavery in cocoa farming in West Africa historically involved adult slaves, the modern version is almost exclusively based on child slavery. With the promise of a job, child slaves are transported to Côte d’Ivoire from neighboring countries like Mali and Burkina Faso and transported to cocoa farms in remote villages. In Ghana, child slaves are transported from poorer regions. The modern literature on child slavery in the West African cocoa sector, which to a great extent has been led by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and activists, has not properly engaged with the history or evolution of cocoa farming or its link to modern child slavery. While the documentaries and journalistic case studies produced by NGOs and activists have offered crucial evidence of the occurrence of child slavery on West African cocoa farms, they have generated only limited questions and arguments. This is partly due to the practical goals of this literature—for example, showing that child slavery exists (via documentary approaches)—and the use of surveys to attempt to measure its prevalence. This focus primarily serves the antislavery campaign. The literature has also suffered from a lack of conceptual direction. The proximity of categories such as child labor and hazardous child labor has allowed stakeholders to shift the conversation away from child slavery to less problematic forms of labor, especially given the methodological difficulties encountered in uncovering child slavery. However, the literature that has sought to explain the causes of child slavery in cocoa farming in West Africa has been robust and historical due to the contribution of Marxist and other scholars who are not necessarily involved in the antislavery campaign. The campaign against child slavery in cocoa farming has led to copious programs and initiatives on the part of the West African government and other stakeholders.

SLAVERY IN CHARLES DICKENS’ NOVEL OLIVER TWIST

This research discusses the slavery experienced by the characters in the Oliver Twist novel. Those who have no family and no place to stay eventually become slaves who are forced to work for the benefit of the owner. They are treated as property and often get physical violence. This research aims to analyze the types of slavery that are reflected in Oliver Twist novel. This research using descriptive qualitative methods. Researchers used the Marxist approach and slavery theory to find the types of slavery contained in Oliver Twist novel. From the results of the analysis, it was found that there are 4 types of slavery in Oliver Twist novel, namely forced labor, sex slavery, child slavery and domestic servitude.

Child Trafficking and Slavery

“Child trafficking” began its career as a core international child protection issue in the late 1990s. It emerged from the union of the anti–child labor and anti–sex trafficking movements, which both underwent a resurgence at that time and paralleled a rise in focus on the commercial sexual exploitation of children. Since around 2005, trafficking has been joined by “child slavery,” which contemporary abolitionists argue is a subset of the “modern-day slavery” that they claim blights the global economy. Child trafficking and child slavery have thus become twin issues, enshrined in—and targeted for eradication by—the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Conceptually, each issue is understood and constructed within mainstream media and political discourse as a matter of innocents being kidnapped and enslaved by criminal exploiters or sold by their poverty-stricken/“culturally backward” parents. The conventional policy approaches with which this discourse is associated thus tend toward the draconian, replicating the aggressive yet depoliticizing efforts of those who wish to outlaw child labor and (adult or child) prostitution. Scholars and critical practitioners from all continents have pushed back, arguing that discourse is as problematic and reductive as policy is misguided and ineffective. Criticism has targeted the unsophisticated, at times racist nature of many mainstream representations, as well as the damaging, unintended consequences of top-down policy and project interventions. Many have focused on documenting children’s agency amidst their structural constraints, including the consent that they offer for their work, even where that work is labeled as trafficking or slavery. Others have sought to situate this work within its sociocultural contexts. A small handful of scholars have gone inside the discursive and policy regime in order to understand and map how policymakers think and act around these issues. Considerable differences exist between researchers who have conducted empirical research with children labeled as slaves or victims of trafficking and those who examine these issues from a more bird’s-eye perspective. Naturally, there is great overlap between those who examine related issues—such as child labor, child sexual exploitation, modern slavery, or adult sex trafficking. Nevertheless, given the policy, institutional, and discursive overlaps between child trafficking and slavery and child labor, many of the texts cited will be drawn from literature that straddles both topics.

The Little Italian Slaves

This chapter examines Celso Cesare Moreno's crusade in defense of those he referred to as “the Italian slave children,” albeit with an ulterior motive. It first considers child labor in Italy and the plight of very young Italian street musicians, focusing on initiatives to ameliorate their conditions by individuals such as Ferdinando De Luca, the Consul General of Italy in New York, author Giuseppe Guerzoni, and Moreno himself. It then analyzes Moreno's criticism of De Luca and his publicity and lobbying campaign against Italian child slavery, using the New York Times as his primary tool and enlisting the support of two people best identified with the abolitionist cause: Senator Charles Sumner and Frederick Douglas. The chapter also discusses the so-called “Moreno bill,” introduced by Sumner in the Senate in January 1874, and its impact on the campaign to eliminate the presence of the wandering child musicians in Italy.