Collaboration, the key to ending cocoa's child labor

While it is common practice in many agricultural societies for older children to help out on the family farm after school or on weekends, a line has to be drawn when the work in question is excessive or hazardous, when it gets in the way of a child’s right to education, play or rest, or when even young children are made to work. According to the International Labor Organization, more child laborers work in agriculture than any other industry in the world. Since the 1990s, the issue has plagued the West African cocoa sector, where 70 percent of the world’s cocoa is grown. Today, an estimated 2.1 million child laborers work in cocoa production in just Ghana and Ivory Coast. A recently published Tulane University survey — undertaken as part of the commitments under the Harkin-Engel Protocol, an international agreement aimed at ending the worst forms of child labor — reported that the total number of child laborers working in cocoa in Ghana and Ivory Coast increased 21 percent from 2008-09 to 2013-14. A closer look at the data suggests that the overall rise is due to Ivory Coast’s figures, which indicate that the number of child laborers in the world’s top cocoa-producing country grew 48 percent in the same time frame. But the increase is primarily due to a spike in both the number of households growing cocoa and the amount of cocoa produced. However, Ghana — which also saw a rise in households and production — reported a 4 percent drop in the number of child laborers in cocoa, which suggests that progress has been made in the country’s cocoa sector. The report also did reveal some important signs of progress overall. For instance, there are 650,000 more children in cocoa-growing areas now attending school, and there has also been a decline in the frequency and severity of hazardous tasks undertaken by children on cocoa farms. These victories, though important, are still insufficient given the magnitude of the problem. Much more needs to be done to hit the 2010 Framework of Action target, which aims to reduce by 70 percent the worst forms of child labor in the cocoa sector by 2020. “While we can therefore see some positive trajectories which confirm that the sum total of the sector’s efforts are making a positive difference, the fact that the absolute number of child laborers in cocoa has increased, and the fact that that number is so great, clearly indicates that the solutions we have applied to date, while effective in their own right, do not yet match the growing scale or the complexity of the problem,” Nick Weatherill, executive director of the International Cocoa Initiative, told Devex. Invisible, underfunded crisis Child labor in cocoa has been notoriously difficult to measure and track due in large part to the fragmented and diffused nature of the industry, and to the fact that the majority of children working in cocoa do so on their family’s small farms. In Ivory Coast, there are currently 1.4 million cocoa-growing households. Since most child labor is not constant or regular, occurring instead sporadically throughout the cocoa-growing cycle, Weatherill explained that incidence surveys cannot be based on observation techniques, and have had to rely instead on household interviews, “for which there are multiple methodological challenges and a strong response bias toward underreporting, given farmers’ perception of child labor as a taboo subject.” Cleophas Mally, co-president of ICI and director of WAO-Afrique, believes that child labor in agriculture, specifically in the cocoa sector, is not getting nearly as much attention — and funding — as it should. “We do not have a lot of organizations that have committed themselves to the issue of child labor,” he told Devex. “And also the international community itself [does not] give a lot of financial support to fight against the issue.” But the problem is, in fact, quite an urgent one. A 2010 Anti-Slavery International report found that a significant number of children aged 10-16 from Mali and Burkina Faso had been trafficked to work on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast. They faced poor living and working conditions and were not allowed to leave. After working for two or three years, most were paid much less than expected, while others were not paid at all. For the more vulnerable subset of trafficked children, Weatherill said that more distinct responses are needed on top of stronger community and supply chain vigilance, a strengthened rule of law, adequate and appropriate child protection and efforts to tackle poverty. Partnerships at the heart of intervention The causes of child labor are multidimensional. Apart from extreme poverty, a number of factors increase a child’s vulnerability to child labor. These include a lack of awareness of child rights in the community and family, lack of access to affordable schools, and disillusionment with the benefits of an education — especially in very poor societies with high unemployment rates. Particularly for child laborers employed outside their households, demand is another important but often overlooked factor that contributes to the architecture of child labor. “The problem we have to see is the problem of demand, because [when] there’s a demand, they’ll provide,” Mally said. “A lot of people know that when they’re working with children, they’re less expensive.” Because the causes of child labor are multidimensional, solving the problem will require a multistakeholder approach. “The causes of child labor are multiple, deeply rooted and complex, so no single actor carries all the solutions,” Weatherill said. “The only route forward is one built on partnerships: between traditionally competing companies who are now increasingly committed to alignment, between industry and civil society, between cocoa-producing and chocolate-consuming nations.” ICI, an independent multistakeholder initiative, is positioned on the front lines of the fight against child labor in the cocoa industry. Its membership is balanced between farmer’s organizations, unions and civil society on one side and private sector companies on the other. ICI also works closely with the governments of Ivory Coast and Ghana, having proven quite effective within a concentrated area of operation. “Scaling up our impact will depend on both doing more ourselves, and also influencing others to do more,” Weatherill said. “More resources and more capacity dedicated to tackling child labor will undoubtedly be needed, and so bringing additional company members on board, and making more strategic linkages with the development community (implementing agencies and donors alike) will be important.” Like ICI, the World Cocoa Foundation works in partnership with its members toward ensuring sustainability in the cocoa value chain. The new CocoaAction strategy aims to coordinate and align sustainability efforts of the world’s largest cocoa and chocolate companies to contribute to a sustainable and economically viable sector by 2020. While the onus of protecting the rights of children caught up in child labor in the cocoa sector should always be on the government, chocolate retailers have taken an active role in trying to eradicate child labor and other unethical practices from their value chain. “While an initial impulse 15 years ago may have been about protecting brands, I think there’s certainly many of them who are quite concerned about some of the deeper issues with cocoa production, from sustainability and ecology through to child rights and child labor,” Aidan McQuade, director of Anti-Slavery International, told Devex. The ICI currently has two main approaches for interventions to child labor. The first one focuses on child-centered community development, which creates a more protective environment for children. This approach covers raising awareness, farmer empowerment, livelihood support and improving access to basic services such as education, health care and safe water. As a result of this approach, there was a 19 percent increase in school enrollment in ICI-assisted communities from 2013 to 2014. The second approach focuses on supply chain management by building capacities for child labor monitoring and remediation at different levels of the supply chain. With the eradication of child labor in all its forms figuring into the post-2015 sustainable development goals, many stakeholders are hoping that more attention — and funding — will soon be given to this invisible but persistent issue. “It’s about changing the habits of generations,” McQuade said. “In trying to address those things, it’s also about changing the wider social circumstances. … So [child labor] is part of a broader problem. And trying to address that problem in its breadth is also something that should be happening from the very beginning.” Join Devex to network with peers, discover talent and forge new partnerships in international development — it’s free. Then sign up for the Devex Impact newsletter to receive cutting-edge news and analysis at the intersection of business and development.