Cocoa board will monitor child labour

An independent body has been formed to curb child labour in the West African cocoa sector.

The Cocoa Verification Board, set up by the US non-profit organization Verite with the support of the industry and West African governments, will hire and train auditors to visit producers in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, the two biggest cocoa exporters.

‘Abusive labour practices’ will be reported to the companies concerned, which will be expected to deal with them immediately in conjunction with non-governmental organizations and government officials.

The board will be a point of contact for the industry, West African governments and civil society.

Bill Guyton, president of the industry-funded World Cocoa Foundation, which has been instrumental in setting up the board, said he hoped the outcome would be ‘credible, independent verification for cocoa farming certification’ – which he conceded had yet to emerge.

John Tepper Marlin, a social auditing specialist and adjunct professor of business ethics at New York’s Stern School of Business, said the board was ‘a good step forward’, but he was worried about the scale of the task taken on, as there are more than two million small cocoa farms in West Africa. ‘The main question I have is about how much [the board] has bitten off,’ he said. ‘It has taken on a lot.’

A 2002 survey by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture found children on West African cocoa farms missing school and being exposed to agricultural chemicals or other dangerous work practices. No child slavery was found.