More Effort Needed to Curb Child Labor in Cocoa Sector – ICI

The cocoa industry needs to do more to tackle child labour in Ivory Coast and Ghana, where around one in three minors in growing areas are affected by the issue, the International Cocoa Initiative said.

While progress has been made, only 10% to 20% of communities across the supply chain in the two countries are covered by measures aimed at reducing child labour, the Swiss-based foundation said in a report on Thursday. It laid out a strategy through 2026 that encourages more legislation for affected areas and policies such as improving access to education.

“We are aiming to drive full coverage of child labour and forced labour risks across the cocoa supply chain in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, which involves reaching 70% more children than under our previous strategy,” ICI Executive Director Nick Weatherill said. “Human rights due to diligence legislation, for instance, is being increasingly applied to global supply chains.”

The top producing countries have come under increased pressure to clean up the sector, and major chocolate companies including Mars Inc. and Nestle SA have committed to help eradicate child labour from their supply chains. Some 2 million children were working in plantations in West Africa, according to Cocoa Barometer 2018, published by several non-governmental organizations including Oxfam and Voice Network.

It’s part of the culture for children to help parents on plantations when they’re not at school and that isn’t limited to cocoa, said Yves Kone, managing director of Ivory Coast’s industry regulator, Le Conseil du Cafe-Cacao. Cases in which minors are forced to work are “marginal,” he said.

The Ivorian regulator has audited about 900,000 farmers so far as part of its traceability effort, Kone said. A full list is expected to be compiled by the end of October, just after the start of the main-crop harvest. A spokesman for Ghana’s cocoa board didn’t respond to calls and a text message seeking comment.