01 August 2008
Combating Child Labor in Cocoa Growing
The International Labor Organization (ILO) has estimated that 284,000 children in four West African countries were working in the cocoa cultivation and processing industry.
The ILO found that many child laborers were from impoverished areas and were sent by their parents to cocoa growers in the belief that the children would find work and send their earnings home. However, once removed from their families, the children were forced to work in slave-like conditions and were beaten regularly. Only slightly more than one-third of children working on cocoa farms attended school while working, and another third of school-age laborers had never attended school.
These children often worked more than 12 hours a day. A majority of the 284,000 children used dangerous machetes to clear fields and other sharp objects to slice open cocoa pods. More than half applied pesticides without protective equipment. Sixty-four percent of these laborers were under the age of 14, and 40 percent were girls.
In 2002, with advice from the ILO, a new international, public-private partnership was established—the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI). The ICI brings together the capabilities of the global cocoa industry with expertise from labor, consumer groups, nongovernmental organizations, and activists. In partnership with the ILO and producer governments, the ICI seeks to oversee and sustain efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in cocoa growing and processing.
The ILO also has undertaken a large-scale action plan to eliminate the use of child labor in cocoa production in the countries directly concerned: the producing countries of Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria.
The three-year effort combines raising awareness of the problem among families and communities; helping producers, inspectors, and workers build the capacity to address the problem; intervening to remove children from forced and unsafe farm work and facilitate their enrollment in school; introducing improvements in the income-generating capacities of families; and providing monitoring and feedback.
The program—known as the West Africa Cocoa and Commercial Agriculture Project to Combat Hazardous and Exploitive Child Labor (WACAP—has received $5 million from the U.S. Department of Labor and an additional $1 million from the cocoa industry.
As of December 2004, WACAP could point to these accomplishments:
• It had provided awareness-building meetings and workshops—using tailor-made training materials—to more than 25,000 people. In so doing, it cooperated with the Sustainable Tree Crops Program in West Africa to use the farmer field schools network, and with other nongovernmental organizations, as well as with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
• It had identified, counseled, and withdrawn from work more than 3,000 children below the age of 13. The program's goal is to reach 9,700 children by 2006.
• It had, in each cocoa production country, identified and coordinated the establishment or reinforcement of mechanisms to combat child labor with government agencies, trade unions, employers, civil society, and research and academic institutions.
Source: ILO-IPEC
From the May 2005 edition of eJournal USA
