Top officials from Ivory Coast's cocoa industry detained under a corruption probe ordered by President Laurent Gbagbo have complained of human rights violations, their lawyer said Monday.

The world's top cocoa producer Ivory Coast Friday launched a programme to fight a steady fall in the quality of its main export earner.

Once it was the exclusive preserve of men but not any more: hundreds of women in Ivory Coast are ignoring patriarchal tradition and turning to the growing of cocoa.According to Agathe Vanie, who founded an association of women growers in her village of Boko, the reason is simple: `the misery of women in the face of the financial wealth of the men who own cocoa plantations.`

The first of five ministers set to testify as part of a wider corruption investigation in the Ivory Coast`s key cocoa sector appeared in court on Monday.Former agriculture minister Alphonse Douati, now the minister for animal production, arrived at the Abidjan courthouse surrounded by bodyguards and close associates carrying boxes of files.

ABIDJAN, Sept 22, 2008 (AFP) - Ivory Coast has established a new cocoa management committee to oversee operations of its key export industry, mired in widespread corruption allegations, the government said Monday.

ABIDJAN, September 5, 2008 (AFP) - Ivory Coast's cocoa sector needs to be comprehensively modernised to deliver its full potential, the deputy chief of the World Bank for Africa, Obiageli Ezekwesili, said here Friday.'It is not going to be sufficient to change the management in the cocoa sector,' she told a press conference.

ABIDJAN, September 5, 2008 (AFP) - Staff from Ivory Coast's coffee and cocoa marketing body BCC have launched an unlimited strike over back pay that is paralysing exports, an official for the BCC body said Friday.'The unionists have ransacked' the hall dealing with export operations, leading to a 'paralysis' in the coffee-cocoa trade, said senior BCC official Kouassi Konan.

ABIDJAN, July 22, 2008 (AFP) - In the last month life inside the sinister main prison in Ivory Coast, the maison d'arret et de correction d'Abidjan (Maca), has taken on a chocolate flavour as it filled up with top cocoa officials arrested in a large scale corruption probe.

ABIDJAN, July 1, 2008 (AFP) - Three officials from Ivory Coast's cocoa and coffee regulation authority have been imprisoned in a massive corruption probe into the cocoa industry in top world producer, prosecutors said Tuesday.

ABIDJAN, June 27, 2008 (AFP) - A massive corruption probe into the cocoa industry in top world producer Ivory Coast claimed Friday the scalp of another former close ally of President Laurent Gbagbo, legal officials said.