Tony's over ongelijkheid en onrecht

Tony’s Chocolonely Statement on inequality and social injustice

At Tony’s our main mission is to fight for equality and fairness – it inherently affects how we aspire to do business. This is why we cannot idly stand by and be silent as black people in America and worldwide continue to suffer under the oppressive weight of racism. We must speak out against inequality and violence caused by racism.

It is with a heavy heart that we witness the current events, but it also fills us with hope to see so many people around the world march in solidarity and acknowledge that systemic racism is a global and deeply engrained problem. Systemic racism affects lives in many ways; be it unbalanced chances in the job market, unjust treatment in the justice system or unequal business relations.

These social and economic structures sustain and support structural inequality. They result in poverty and generate wider gaps in society as they are created by businesses that prioritize profit over people and the planet. It is this systematic injustice that Tony’s has vouched to change. We focus our efforts on the people working in the cocoa industry. We’re far from perfect and we continuously learn along the way while we aim to lead by example in creating more equality in the cocoa sector. Our mission is to end the most dire forms of inequality – modern slavery and illegal child labor – in the cocoa industry.

As Tony’s, we know that change starts with creating awareness. Besides supporting via donations we’re currently having further conversations how we can become even more active as a brand.

Our main priority remains unchanged: to fight inequality in the cocoa industry. Recent research has shown that illegal child labor is still increasing. But we also have more work to do in all Tony’s offices worldwide. The current events made us realize that we need to step up our game when it comes to continuously being aware of our own implicit biases and to pro-actively strive for a much more diverse workforce. There is a lot of work to be done. We are not there yet.

We invite our community to join the conversation and be part of the change, together with us. We want to hear everyone’s voices and enable everyone’s efforts, so we can make this a better and more equal world for everyone.

Let’s keep on raising the bar!