‘Child labor is still a huge problem in cocoa industry’ 10 July 2019

It has been almost twenty years since leading chocolate manufacturers signed an agreement to eradicate child labour in 2001. Not only did they fail to meet the original 2005 deadline after vowing to achieve it without government oversight, but now a revised goal says it hopes to get rid of only 70 percent of child labor by 2020 – a disappointing scaling-down of its ambitions. Child labor continues to be a serious problem on cocoa farms throughout West Africa, which produces two-thirds of the world's cocoa. It is so prevalent that reporters from the Washington Post who spent a month traveling through Ivory Coast earlier this year, speaking with child farm laborers and farm owners along the way, said that "the odds are substantial that a chocolate bar bought in the United States is the product of child labor."

…In analyzing why efforts to reduce child labor have failed so far, critics says that efforts have been "stalled by indecision and insufficient financial commitment." For example, the cocoa industry pulls in roughly $103 billion in sales annually, and yet has invested a paltry $150 million over 18 years to deal with child labor. In the words of Antonie Fountain, managing director of the Voice Network, a group working to end child labor in the cocoa industry: "The companies have always done just enough so that if there were any media attention, they could say, ‘Hey guys, this is what we’re doing.' We haven’t eradicated child labor because no one has been forced to... How many fines did they face? How many prison sentences? None. There has been zero consequence."

…An even bigger problem is the dire poverty that afflicts cocoa-growing nations like Ghana and Ivory Coast. With most farmers making an annual income of around $1,900 on smallholder farms of under 10 acres, and with literacy rates under 44 percent, it is exceedingly difficult to afford schooling for children and much easier to put them to work…Third-party certifications, such as Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade, are seen as a good choice, as they set standards for wages, working conditions, and environmental stewardship that are higher than the average. However, they cannot always guarantee that there's been no child labor used. Inspections are infrequent, planned in advance (allowing farmers to send children away), and only occur on one-tenth of certified farms. Even Fairtrade America's CEO Bryan Lew admitted it isn't a perfect solution: "Child labor in the cocoa industry will continue to be a struggle as long as we continue to pay farmers a fraction of the cost of sustainable production."