Controversial use of children in the production of cacao beans
Boy collecting cocoa after the beans have been dried
Child labour is a recurring issue in cocoa production. Cote d’Ivoire (also known in English as Ivory Coast) and Ghana, together produce nearly 60% of the world's cocoa each year. During the 2018/19 cocoa-growing season, research commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago in these two countries and found that 1.48 million children are engaged in hazardous work on cocoa farms including working with sharp tools and agricultural chemicals and carrying heavy loads. That number of children is significant, representing 43 percent of all children living in agricultural households in cocoa growing areas. During the same period cocoa production in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana increased 62 percent while the prevalence of child labour in cocoa production among all agricultural households increased 14 percentage points.[1][2] Attention on this subject has focused on West Africa, which collectively supplies 69% of the world's cocoa, and Côte d'Ivoire, supplying 35%, in particular.[3]
The 2016 Global Estimates of Child Labour indicate that one-fifth of all African children are involved in child labour.[4] Nine percent of African children are in hazardous work. It is estimated that more than 1.8 million children in West Africa are involved in growing cocoa.[5] A 2013–14 survey commissioned by the Department of Labor and conducted by Tulane University found that an estimated 1.4 million children aged 5 years old to 11 years old worked in agriculture in cocoa-growing areas, while approximately 800,000 of them were engaged in hazardous work, including working with sharp tools and agricultural chemicals and carrying heavy loads.[6][7] According to the NORC study, methodological differences between the 2018/9 survey and earlier ones, together with errors in the administration of the 2013/4 survey have made it challenging to document changes in the number of children engaged in child labour over the past five years.
A major study of the issue, published in Fortune magazine in the U.S. in March 2016, concluded that approximately 2.1 million children in West Africa "still do the dangerous and physically taxing work of harvesting cocoa". The report was doubtful as to whether the situation can be improved significantly.[8]
^"Child Labor in the Production of Cocoa | U.S. Department of Labor". www.dol.gov. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
^"Assessing Progress in Reducing Child Labor in Cocoa Growing Areas of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana | NORC.org". norc. Retrieved 27 October 2020.
^"Cocoa Market Update" (PDF). World Cocoa Foundation. May 2010. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 October 2011. Retrieved 11 December 2011.
^"Child labour in Africa (IPEC)". www.ilo.org. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
^"Final Report on the Status of Public and Private Efforts to Eliminate the Worst Forms of Child Labor (WFCL) in the Cocoa Sectors of Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana" (PDF). Tulane University. 31 March 2011. p. 7. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 April 2012.
^Haglage, Abby (30 September 2015). "Lawsuit: Your Candy Bar Was Made by Child Slaves". The Daily Beast.
^School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University (30 July 2015). "Final Report: 2013/14 Survey Research on Child Labor in West African Cocoa Growing Areas" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 December 2017. Retrieved 25 March 2016.
^O'Keefe, Brian (1 March 2016). "Behind a bittersweet industry". Fortune.com. Fortune. Retrieved 7 January 2018. For a decade and a half, the big chocolate makers have promised to end child labour in their industry—and have spent tens of millions of dollars in the effort. But as of the latest estimate, 2.1 million West African children still do the dangerous and physically taxing work of harvesting cocoa. What will it take to fix the problem?
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