• Strategies to tackle child labour

Strategies to tackle child labour

This document reviews the outcome of a policy instrument drafted in 2001, the “Protocol for the Growing and Processing of Cocoa Beans and their Derivative Products,” also known as the Harkin-Engel Protocol.

The ‘protocol’ was intended to assure consumers that chocolate companies were acting ethically and ending forced and trafficked child labor in their cocoa supply. However, The review finds that the original intent of the ‘protocol’ has not been achieved, and consumers today have no more assurance than they did eight years ago that trafficked or exploited child labor was not used in the production of their chocolate.

The document iterates that public-private partnerships are a not substitute for sustained commitment by governments and donor agencies for comprehensive efforts to address child labor, i.e. through ILO and through the Education for All initiative. It makes the following recommendations to various stakeholders to end the menace of child labour in cocoa sector.

To companies:

• ensure that supply chains provide fair and sustainable incomes for farmers and sustainable wages for workers
• focus on integrity of supply chains and engage programs that will monitor labor standards to the farm or cooperative level
• openly support multilateral initiatives to hold non-state actors accountable, and ensure OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises

To West African governments:

• work with and support ILO-IPEC programs to eliminate child labor
• work with and support the International Migration Organization (IOM) on strategies tocombat trafficking regionally
• work toward reinstatement of supply management mechanisms in the cocoa sector toprotect farmers from price fluctuations and support revenue transparency

To multilateral agencies:

• the ILO should continue to work with the governments of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana to ensure full implementation of the ILO conventions
• the World Bank and other international financial institutions should reverse policy and publicly support the efforts of developing country governments to regulate commodityprices, and should support and fund government efforts to implement the Education forAll initiative

To consumers:

• reward companies with ethical integrity in supply chains- companies that can tell you how the farmers and workers that produced your chocolate were treated.
• continue to demand that world’s largest chocolate manufacturers answer to the question as to how you can be assured no exploited or trafficked child labor was used in the making of their products.

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