Chocolate industry fails to fulfill pledge to stop dangerous child labor at cocoa farms in West Africa

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Source: End Slavery Now Photo by: Daniel Rosenthal

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.