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.
