The chocolate treats we enjoy this holiday season likely have a dark side.

The chocolate industry earns an estimated $110 billion a year, yet many of the farmers who grow cocoa live in abject poverty. Despite some progress, child labor remains a serious problem in cocoa growing communities. Farmers lack critical voice in a cocoa marketplace that does not provide fair, sustainable incomes for farmers or wages for farm workers.

Dear Secretary Kerry:

We write today to applaud the U.S. State Department’s decision to downgrade Thailand to Tier 3 in the 2014 Global Trafficking in Persons Report. This decision is justified and an important step in international efforts to persuade the Royal Thai Government to begin making the difficult, but necessary, changes needed to bring themselves into compliance with the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.