Human Rights & Fair Working Conditions

Child and forced labour remain pressing human rights challenges in cocoa farming, particularly in West Africa. Members of the Cocoa Platform are committed to ensuring fair labour conditions and to eliminating the root causes of child and forced labour. Through coordinated efforts, robust due diligence, and collaboration with local and international partners, we work to protect human rights across the cocoa value chain.

In many cocoa-growing households, especially in West Africa, children and adolescents contribute to farm work—often out of necessity. This is closely linked to multidimensional poverty: most farming families face low and unstable incomes, lack access to basic services, and cannot afford to hire labour.

In rural areas, limited access to quality education, long travel distances to school, and the inability to pay for uniforms or materials further exacerbate the problem. During peak agricultural periods such as the cocoa harvest, children are often called upon to help on the farm—sometimes at the expense of their schooling and well-being.

Studies show that most children working on cocoa farms do so within their immediate or extended families. However, not all such work is considered child labour. Light, non-hazardous tasks performed occasionally—without compromising a child’s health, development or education—are permissible under international standards. These tasks can even contribute positively to children’s development by helping them gain skills for adulthood.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), Conventions 138 and 182, work becomes child labour when it is hazardous, exploitative, or interferes with schooling. This includes activities like carrying heavy loads, using sharp tools, handling agrochemicals, or working excessive hours. Such practices are not permitted and must be actively eliminated.

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 state 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 thereby ensure long-term sustainability. Systemic or even territorial approaches (so-called landscape approaches) are also beneficial to strengthen cross-sectoral cooperation and help prevent child labour from being merely shifted from the cocoa sector to another sector.

In the area of human rights and fair working conditions, our revised Roadmap 2030 (adopted in June 2025) sets the following ambition:

Cocoa production safeguards human rights by ensuring fair labour conditions and eliminating child and forced labour.

To reach this goal, our members commit to:

• Implementing robust Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) systems in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
• Applying or supporting Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS) or equivalent practices that achieve comparable outcomes.
• Scaling up remediation and prevention measures across the supply chain.
• Participating in or co-leading joint projects to address the root causes of child and forced labour, particularly at the community level.
• Engaging in policy dialogue and sector-wide collaboration to support stronger child protection systems and labour law enforcement in producing countries.

Various members of the Cocoa Platform are implementing projects focused on human rights and working conditions. These projects received a contribution from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) thanks to the mediation of the Coordination Office.