A MULTIFACETED PROBLEM

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), ‘Child labor’ refers to work which deprives children of their childhood, their potential and dignity and that is harmful for their physical and mental development. This can include children who are working below the minimum age of employment or are being deprived of their right to mandatory education.

There are socio-economic and cultural challenges that lead farmers to encourage their children to work on cocoa farms as a way of preserving generational income and taking future responsibility for the land. As shown in the 2020 NORC report, most of the children who work on cocoa farms do so within their family structure. In addition to helping on cocoa farms, children may do other household chores, such as fetching water and caring for younger members of the family. Harvest seasons also put more pressure on farming households and children may work on cocoa farms before, after or instead of school at times. At other times, parents take younger children to cocoa farms to avoid leaving them at home alone.

IN THE KEY COCOA-PRODUCING COUNTRIES

Our approach is intended to be fit-for-purpose in the localities where children are at risk and is designed to adapt to different contexts and cultures. We strive to focus our efforts and resources where the risk is most salient, in terms of likelihood, severity, and scale.

Consistent with ILO and UNICEF global statistics on child labor, sub-Saharan Africa sees the highest prevalence of incidents of child labor. Children and their families in rural areas of West Africa, including cocoa growing regions, face a hard reality of poverty and slow development, which includes a lack of education infrastructure. In response, Cocoa Life has developed community-based initiatives, including development of CLMRS, improving access to education and helping to improve farming households’ net income. Over the past decade, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana have made significant progress in increasing access to education, although issues with quality and access to education still persist.

Both Indonesia and India have mandatory universal education for children and established decentralized community governance mechanisms. Local governments provide social support and services to underserved families, which alleviates child vulnerability. Nevertheless, child labor remains a risk in Indonesia, which is one of the world’s largest cocoa producers, particularly when children drop out of school. In India, Cocoa Life works to help reduce child vulnerability by supporting access to school and positive, safe behaviors with the assistance of NGO implementing partners.

MONITORING AND REMEDIATION

Beyond our efforts to help prevent child labor, we engage in monitoring to help identify cases of child labor and children at risk with a goal for them to be able to receive support and remediation through community-based Child Labor Monitoring & Remediation Systems (CLMRS). This includes:

• Awareness-raising activities about issues related to child protection
• Community Child Protection Committees form an integral part of our CLMRS, building the capacity of communities to help identify, support, and protect vulnerable children
• CLMRS cover farming families in Cocoa Life communities and
• focus on needed support, with the goal of: (i) identification of children in or at risk of child labor; (ii) remediation for children identified as vulnerable and families identified as at risk of child labor; and (iii) follow-up and monitoring of children who have received support

We scaled the CLMRS to cover 89% of Cocoa Life communities (or 2,480 communities) in West Africa with a CLMRS by the end of 2024, to continue progressing towards our goal to cover all West African Cocoa Life communities with a CLMRS by the end of 2025. Through this expanded coverage, 240,000² interviews were conducted by our CLMRS to help prevent child labor. In parallel, we continued our efforts to enhance the quality of implementation of our CLMRS.

In the process of scaling CLMRS within communities in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria, we have continued to support community-centered activities that may include community sensitization. Community sensitization efforts may include, for instance, training on identification surveys, raising awareness, and building community support, where appropriate.

As part of community sensitization, we also have set up and supported Community Child Protection Committees (Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire), as well as household monitoring to help identify child labor and to help with remediation.

In a long-term partnership with the ICI, we continue to look for opportunities to further enhance CLMRS implementation and help develop standards for household monitoring and identification, in line with emerging sector practices. A recent assessment by ICI highlighted strengths of the Cocoa Life CLMRS, such as the child-rights centered approach and the development of Child Protection Committees anchored in farming communities (in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana). Building on the sector’s learnings, the assessment also helped identify ways that could further harmonize and enhance implementation. In 2024, we collaborated with our implementing partners to integrate ICI’s recommendations to further enhance our CLMRS, including by setting a monitoring cycle for the communities with the goal that each community is monitored at least every other year. This aims to help accelerate remediation timelines and to further enhance follow-up visits for potential children identified in child labor situations.

HELPING ENABLE SYSTEMIC SOLUTIONS

In order to help drive long-lasting, positive change for children in cocoa-growing regions, all actors along the cocoa supply chain should play their part to help combat the systemic issues underlying child labor.

We are part of CLEF, a multi-stakeholder initiative between Jacobs Foundation, the UBS Optimus Foundation, the Government of Côte d’Ivoire, and the broader cocoa sector. The collaboration aims to reach ~4 million children in cocoa growing areas and provide them with improved access to quality primary education. Inspired by this groundbreaking landscape-wide initiative in Côte d’Ivoire, we support the development of a similar initiative in Ghana.