Combating Forced Labor’s Cocoa Project

The main focus of CAL’s program on combating forced labor is the cocoa industry in West Africa. We’ve filed 307 petitions, written reports on governance structures, and brought a lawsuit against Hershey and Rainforest Alliance. 

For some background, in 2001, eight cocoa and chocolate companies came together to sign the Harkin-Engel Protocol, a voluntary agreement in which companies promised to eradicate child labor in the West African cocoa industry by 2005. Twenty years after the agreement went into effect, an estimated 1.56 million children work in the cocoa industry in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, which produce about two-thirds of the world’s cocoa. About 1.48 million of these children are engaged in hazardous child labor, which includes using a machete, carrying heavy loads -- often of cocoa beans -- and spraying pesticides. Still, despite the massive profits that global chocolate companies earn, poverty is pervasive. In Ghana, the second largest producer of cocoa, only about 9 percent of cocoa farming households earn a living income, meaning that an overwhelming majority of farmers and their families live in poverty. Predictably, the COVID-19 pandemic has made this situation even worse, as we’ve written in our 2021 report, "Always Left Holding the Bag”.

Part of this is a result of poor governance mechanisms. Ghana’s cocoa industry is controlled by the Ghana Cocoa Board, or COCOBOD, a government agency that runs the cocoa industry. COCOBOD has enormous power over the cocoa industry and is involved in all steps of cocoa production, from providing inputs to farmers, to regulating who can purchase and export cocoa. In 2019, Ghana received a $600 million syndicated loan from the African Development Bank and other private lenders. The purpose of the loan was to maximize cocoa production and improve farmers’ livelihoods. As a prerequisite for the loan, COCOBOD had to establish an Environmental and Social Management System (ESMS) with a grievance and redress mechanism. So, on June 17, 2021, Corporate Accountability Lab joined the University of Ghana School of Law, the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Center for International Human Rights, and SEND Ghana to launch the report, COCOBOD’s Unrealised Potential: Promoting Human Rights, Welfare, and the Environment in Ghana’s Cocoa-Growing Communities. The report examines COCOBOD’s ESMS and its grievance and redress mechanism and finds that while the grievance and redress mechanism could be a powerful tool for cocoa farmers, workers, and their communities, the ESMS and grievance and redress mechanism remain unfulfilled promises.

However, this is also a result of the failure of what is called “corporate social responsibility”. Over the past decade, certification schemes like Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade have become more prevalent. These labels, the result of certifications that companies pay a fee for, supposedly provide farmers with increased income, improved training, and increased access to the market. They “require” farmers to uphold certain human rights and environmental standards and then put their labels on cocoa products to mark them as allegedly free of labor and environmental abuses. Yet time and time again certification schemes have been shown to fail those who need them most -- cocoa farmers, their children, and their communities. During recent investigations into labor practices on Ivorian cocoa farms, CAL found incidences of child labor on farms that sell to Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade certified cooperatives. Some parents explained that their children worked on the farms because the family couldn’t afford for them not to -- it was the only way for the family to eat. While this information is not surprising, it demonstrates that certification schemes have done little to improve conditions for cocoa farmers and their families. CAL has therefore filed suit against Hershey and the certification scheme Rainforest Alliance in a consumer protection case in Washington, D.C. Superior Court. CAL, as the plaintiff in the case, is suing the defendants -- Hershey and Rainforest Alliance -- for false and deceptive marketing representations on certain Hershey chocolate products. 

Previously, Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) and International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) also submitted evidence of forced child labor and trafficking in the Ivorian cocoa sector to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under Section 307 of the Tariff Act. This evidence was submitted as a supplement to a 307 petition filed almost a year and a half ago, in February 2020. In both petitions CAL requested that CBP issue a Withhold Release Order (WRO) to stop the importation of all cocoa and chocolate produced with forced child labor from Cote d’Ivoire. CBP has failed to take action since we filed our petition in February 2019.

Cocoa Project Blog Posts