Tackling child labour
Child labour in cocoa farming still exists, especially in West Africa. The members of the Swiss Platform for Sustainable Cocoa actively contribute to eliminating its root causes.
What is it about?
Many families who grow cocoa depend on the work contribution of children and adolescents. This is because the vast majority of households are affected by poverty, especially in West Africa. Therefore, most cocoa farmers cannot afford to hire external labour, especially since cocoa farming usually only requires seasonal support. In addition, schools in the mostly rural cocoa-growing regions are not always accessible on foot and families are often unable to pay for school uniforms, textbooks, meals, etc. This means that, especially in times of labour shortages, external labour is not available. Thus, especially in times of labour shortage, children and adolescents often help out on the farm instead of going to school regularly.
What is child labour?
Studies show that most children who work on cocoa farms do so within their immediate or extended family. Not all of this counts as child labour. Light and non-hazardous work that children do on their family's farm for a limited period of time and without interfering with their schooling is internationally accepted. Such activities can contribute to the development of children and adolescents by providing them with skills and experience that help prepare them for future work in agriculture. However, if the work performed adversely affects a child's health, development or education, it is unacceptable under internationally agreed conventions (including ILO Conventions 138 and 182). Accordingly, activities such as carrying heavy loads, using sharp tools, spraying chemicals, or if the work takes too many hours or interferes with a child's school attendance are considered child labour and are therefore not permitted.
How can child labour be tackled?
In order to effectively prevent and address child labour, it is important to combine approaches at the national and community levels and to address the causes and consequences with a systemic approach. This means that measures to combat child labour should always be grounded in the relevant geographical, socio-economic and cultural context and must make sense to families and communities. Concrete measures include raising awareness among families and village communities about child labour, identifying children who are engaged in child labour, and providing prevention and remediation measures for children and young people who are affected and at risk. Such prevention and remediation measures include promoting birth registration, enabling school attendance, promoting women's voices, and activities to increase the income of cocoa farmers.
A classic approach to combating child labour is the so-called CLMRS approach (Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems). It provides for the identification of children in child labour, the implementation of remedial measures including follow-up, and awareness-raising work to be carried out on a cyclical basis.
Building on national programmes
Another crucial measure is to increase cooperation with local authorities and recognise the importance of national child protection policies and programmes. Preventing child labour and forced labour is primarily the responsibility of government social and child protection policies and programmes. Private and public-private interventions should therefore always be built on the basis of existing national systems in order to increase local government ownership of the approaches and thus ensure long-term sustainability. Systemic or even territorial approaches (so-called landscape approaches) are also beneficial to strengthen cross-sectoral cooperation and thus prevent child labour from merely being shifted from the cocoa sector to another sector.
The goals of the Cocoa Platform according to the Roadmap 2030
Members of the Cocoa Platform have jointly set the following targets by 2030 in the area of child labour:
- All members who are active in countries of origin with an incidence of child labour in cocoa production contribute to eliminating the root causes of child labour and thus child labour and to improving the perspective of young people.
- The Cocoa Platform engages in sustainable cocoa-sourcing landscapes involving efforts to tackle child labour effectively. Two landscape approaches are to be implemented by 2025.
- The Cocoa Platform signs and operationalizes cooperation agreements aimed at child labour prevention with local authorities and, where appropriate, with multilateral organisations such as ILO, UNICEF, and development banks.
Selected projects in the area of child labour
Various members of the Cocoa Platform are implementing projects to combat child labour. These projects received a contribution from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) thanks to the mediation of the Coordination Office.
Targeted income support to vulnerable households to reduce child labour
With this project, ICI, ECOM and Nestlé tested and documented two innovative approaches to improve efforts to prevent and address child labour in cocoa-growing communities in Ghana. These were: (1) to develop a risk model to predict child labour, based on existing information about farming households, and (2) to design a cash transfer programme for cocoa-growing households and test its impact on child labour. Learn more about the project
Working group
At the European level, there is a working group on child labour. Through regular exchanges between members, as well as inputs from experts from local and international institutions, the working group promotes cross-national and cross-sectoral exchange and learning on challenges and strategies to eliminate all forms of child labour in line with SDG target 8.7. With this, members are supported in finding strategies to meet their commitments and targets related to the elimination of child labour and the empowerment of children and young people. Learn more about the working groups