Vast numbers of children in Ghana and the Ivory Coast’s cocoa farms are carrying out dangerous work despite a decades-old pledge of the $100 billion chocolate industry to cut dangerous child labor, a recent report found.

Children across the said West African countries have been exposed to hazardous tasks including clearing land, carrying heavy loads, and using sharp tools to fuel the industry, laying bare a clear picture that the problem in the area has worsened.

1.56 million children still engaged in hazardous child labor

The report, which was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor, found that about half of children between 5 to 17 years old living in Ghana and Ivory Coast’s farms heavily work in cocoa production. From 2018 to 2019, 1.56 million children were engaged in child labor in cocoa production including approximately 790,000 children in Côte d’Ivoire and 770,000 in Ghana.

The prevalence rate of hazardous child labor in cocoa production among cocoa-growing households remained stable, 39 percent in Côted’Ivoire, and 55 percent in Ghana, according to the report.

The chocolate and cocoa industry has pledged two decades ago to tackle the worst forms of child labor and cut the activity by 70 percent by 2020.  The industry also committed a $2 million fund in its partnership with the International Labor Organization. Findings of the study carried out by researchers from NORC at the University of Chicago, however, showed a stark contrast of that pledge.

Chocolate manufacturers need to scale up their efforts

Kareem Kysia, one of the authors of the report, said with the cocoa industry massively ramping up its production, children have lived in poor working conditions in West African nations.

Support from big brands and industry organizations, Kysia asserts, should be scaled up to tackle the pressing issue of child labor.

"If you have a big bucket of boiling water and you pour it in your bathtub, you'll be able to tell the change in temperature. But if you take that same bucket of boiling water and throw it in your swimming pool, you're not going to be able to see a change,” Ksyia told Business Insider.

The World Cocoa Foundation, which is comprised of about 100 member companies representing more than 80 percent of the global cocoa supply chain, on Monday said it would invest some $1.2 billion in additional profits for cocoa farmers and committed to boosting child labor monitoring by 2025.

Child labor remains to be a persistent challenge in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, according to Richard Scobey, president of the World Cocoa Foundation. He added that child labor reduction targets had been set "without fully understanding" the challenge ahead.

Chocolate giant Mars Wrigley commits $1 billion to address child labor in the cocoa supply chain

In response to the report, Mars Wrigley, the world's leading chocolate manufacturer, said "child has no place in the cocoa supply chain." It is calling for a "robust private-public collaboration" to tackle the root causes of child labor in the cocoa-growing communities in West Africa.

The company also committed $1 billion as part of is "Cocoa for Generations strategy to help fix a broken supply chain" and expressed its support for appropriate due diligence legislation to address the problem. 

"The problem of child labor is bigger than any one entity, and the solution must be grounded in an unwavering commitment to action and collaboration between farmers, communities, civil society, business, and government,” according to Mars Wrigley.

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