Pressure is growing on the global confectionery industry to show that
its measures to bear down on child labour at cocoa farms in Africa are
paying off.
Amnesty International announced last month that it was ‘alarmed’ at the
continuing level of child labour despite efforts by manufacturers for
more than five years to eradicate the practice, and suggested the
industry’s voluntary programmes have failed to make significant inroads.
Benedetta Lacey, Amnesty UK’s business and human rights programme
manager, said: ‘If the chocolate industry continues to fail to live up
to its promises, this will only serve to strengthen the call for
tougher measures on all companies to ensure respect for human rights.’
Congress is already working on legislation to penalize US companies
found to be using cocoa produced using the labour of children.
Amnesty says its concerns have been reinforced by a BBC television
investigation last month that claimed the industry’s programmes have
made only a minimal impact on the cocoa farms of Ivory Coast, which
produce almost half the world’s cocoa and where child labour is most
prevalent. The BBC said it found child labour ‘is still rife’ in Ivory
Coast and suggested that ‘patience is running out’ among campaigners.
Most of the big companies in the industry, including Cadbury Schweppes,
Ferrero, Hershey Foods, Kraft Foods, Mars and Nestlé, combined in 2002
to develop an industry-wide action plan, known as the Cocoa Protocol,
to tackle child labour on up to two million family-owned west African
cocoa farms.
The protocol committed the companies to a number of measures, such as
improving children’s educational prospects, raising farmers’ incomes
and productivity, and starting community action plans to improve living
standards, all overseen by a new body, the International Cocoa
Initiative.
The manufacturers had hoped to create a monitoring regime covering most
cocoa farms in Ghana and Ivory Coast by 2005. However, that target was
missed and now the companies say they expect half the farms in
cocoa-growing areas of Ghana and Ivory Coast to be certified by the
middle of 2008.
The delay has upset some non-governmental organizations as well as US
Democrat Congressman Eliot Engel, who was instrumental in bringing the
Cocoa Protocol into being. Last month Engel said that he was ‘very
unhappy’ at the slow progress and would support legislation.
However, the industry’s trade bodies insist there are no easy
short-term fixes. The UK-based Biscuit, Cake, Chocolate and
Confectionery Association claims initial efforts have been set back by
a two-year conflict in Ivory Coast and says proper piloting, which
takes time, is necessary if mistakes are to be avoided.
The Chocolate Manufacturers’ Association in the US emphasized that a
number of the pilot schemes will shortly be completed, making it
possible to ‘scale up’ some of the programmes in the autumn, when the cocoa harvest gets under way.
