The chocolate wars
Under the 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol, governments, cocoa producers and international organisations pledged to reduce the worst kinds of child labour in Ivory Coast and Ghana by 70%.
The deadline for meeting this goal was 2005, then it was pushed back to 2008, then 2010, before a final deadline was extended to 2020. The “Cocoa Barometer” report claims that “not a single company or government is anywhere near reaching their commitments of a 70% reduction of child labour by 2020”.
Most chocolate makers have introduced programmes with the objective of reducing child labour — from Nestle’s Cocoa Plan, which aims to improve the lives of cocoa farmers and the quality of their products, to Mondelez’s Cocoa Life, which sets out to empower farmers by improving productivity and cost effectiveness — but, says the “Cocoa Barometer”, “there is no evidence at present that farmers are earning more due to these commitments”.
Nick Weatherill, executive director of the International Cocoa Initiative, a Genevabased nonprofit organisation set up in 2012 with a mandate to facilitate the Harkin-Engel Protocol, says that though there is a lot of good work happening in the industry, it is not happening “on the right scale”. The 2020 deadline is unlikely to be met, he says.
“One of the problems with the 70% by 2020 target was that the people setting it didn’t understand what they were dealing with,” he says.
“The Sustainable Development Goal of eradicating child labour by 2025 is more realistic, but I’m still cautious. To meet this target, everyone, including chocolate makers, governments and the countries where the chocolate is consumed, would need to double down on their efforts and investment.” —© The Daily Telegraph, London