Child labour in cocoa

Survey research commissioned by the United States Department of Labor and carried out by NORC at the University of Chicago estimated the prevalence of child labour in cocoa-growing households in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, and found it affecting a large proportion of children in those households.

The report discusses its own methodology at length, including the difficulty of comparing across survey rounds, and ChocolateHQ does not state a trend on the basis of it. What the research supports is that the problem is large and measured, not that it is rising or falling.

The category is broader than the image it evokes, and the distinction matters. Most of what is counted is children working on family farms — carrying loads, using sharp tools, applying agrochemicals, working hours that interfere with schooling. Hazardous work is defined against national and international standards rather than by intuition.

Trafficked and forced child labour is a separate and smaller category, and it is real. Conflating the two makes the problem easier to dismiss when the larger number turns out to include a child helping their parents, and it also makes it easier to overstate. Both are failures of accuracy.

The industry made public commitments to reduce the worst forms of child labour beginning in the early 2000s, with deadlines that were extended repeatedly.

The structural reason is the one running through this whole cluster: household labour on a smallholding that cannot afford to hire is a symptom of income, and a monitoring programme does not change the household's economics. Interventions that combine monitoring with income support and school access have better evidence behind them than monitoring alone, and they are more expensive and slower.

Regulatory due-diligence obligations are the newest mechanism and are too recent to assess.