Child labour is defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and is harmful to their physical and mental development. It is due to a combination of a lack of access to education, poverty and a lack of community awareness about the hazards for children working in cocoa plantations. There are both positive and negative implications of stopping the use of child labour in the cocoa industry in Cote d'Ivoire but the benefits of eliminating child labour will far outweigh the costs. Côte d'Ivoire's economy is largely market-based and it is the world’s leading producer of cocoa, growing nearly 40% of the global supply. Communities are dedicated to growing the cocoa that is lucrative for governments and the chocolate industry, but brings below-poverty wages for the farmers who produce it, preventing farmers from using proper labour to harvest the crop and turning to illegal child labour.
Cote d'Ivoire is one of the poorest countries in the world today with about 50% of the total population living below poverty line. Many families will lose a major source of income provided by their children's labour when child labour is stopped. Although the child's pay is below poverty level, it might be the family's only source of income and is vital to ease the financial situation in their family. When the child labourers stop working, their families will plunge into even deeper poverty. Thus, there will be an opportunity cost where the government has to supply the children's education and financing transfer programs to compensate these families when their children are receiving education in lieu of work, to support the cost of living and also defray the explicit and implicit costs of education (International Labor Organisation, 2003).
For example, the Self-Help village Initiative in Ivory Coast is a government-implemented initiative that provides households with funds and income-generating activities. Participating villages are provided with service packages worth approximately $60,000, which is funded by taxes and fees on cocoa exports (Global March Against Child Labour, 2013). In support of the 2010 Harkin-Engel declaration, many industry-funded projects have also been laid in efforts to increase household incomes of poor Ivorian households. A substantial amount of financial aid has also been put in place by chocolate companies to address child labour with Nestlé putting in $1.5 million, Barry Callebaut, $300,000 to provide direct services to previously cocoa-farming dependent communities such as livelihood services. (Barry Callebaut, 2016) Although the government of Côte d'Ivoire maintains many programmes to help stop child labour, the scopes of the programmes are insufficient to fully address the extent of the child labor problem as they are limited to a very small number of villages due to fund constraints. In 2011, Cote d'Ivoire announced plans to spend up to $22.4 million between 2015-2017 to reduce the number of labourers working on cocoa fields by 30 percent by 2017 and 70 percent by 2020. However, between 300,000 and one million children are still estimated to work in the agriculture sector today (International Cocoa Initiative, 2016) and only about 4,000 child victims were removed from cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast between 2012 and 2014 according to the authorities. This shows that although there are various schemes put in place to eliminate child labour, it is still a major problem as Ivory Coast remains a poor country, ranking 166 out of 177 on the Human Development Index (HDI) scale, hindering the success of the schemes. Hence, it might not necessarily be beneficial to completely eliminate child labour as it is very costly and such efforts are very demanding.
The chocolate industry is worth an estimated $110 billion a year and chocolate companies are heavily dependent on the majority of cocoa supply coming from Ivory Coast, which provides nearly 40% of the world's total cocoa beans production. According to a report by Tulane University, there were an estimated 1,203,473 child labourers aged 5 to 17 in the cocoa sector during the 2013 -2014 harvest season. This shows that child labour plays an important role in the cocoa industry and it is needed to sustain the economy of the country. Furthermore, demand for chocolate is still going up, which can be seen when the price of cocoa surged 13% in 2015 even as prices for most raw materials were dropping. Most cocoa farmers earn less than $2 per day, an income below the international poverty line and often resort to the use of child labor which is cheaper than adult labour to keep their prices competitive. Without the estimated 100,000 children working in the Ivory Coast’s cocoa industry, the amount of cocoa beans harvested will plunge sharply as they will not be able to afford to hire other workers to harvest the crops. This will lead to the collapse of the country's economy that is very dependent on the revenue earned from cocoa beans.
Stopping child labour will lead to improved health for the child labourers which will translate into economic gains. On farms, children employed are expected to work in hazardous conditions and carry out dangerous tasks, including using machetes and transporting heavy loads. The National Survey on Household Living Standards 2008 identified 1,570,103 children as economically active in the agriculture sector, out of which 91.1% were involved in hazardous work. In addition to the hazards of using machetes, children are also exposed to agricultural chemicals where they consistently deal with prolific insect populations and choose to spray the pods with large amounts of industrial chemicals. In West Africa, 153,000 children spray the pods with these toxins without wearing protective clothing based on a survey by Sustainable Tree Crops Programme. Children who work on cocoa plantations are unavoidably exposed to hazards, including dangerous tools, dust, flames or smoke, hazardous chemicals, and physically demanding labor. Stopping child labour will allow the children to be given back their fundamental human rights and be able to live in a safer environment, which can improve individual productivity and likely to be more efficient at acquire new knowledge, have stronger mental and physical capabilities and obtain better educational outcomes and higher incomes as a result, leading to tangible economic gains for the country.
In addition to preventing child labour, the education sector can provide measures to reintegrate children withdrawn from hazardous work into school. Almost one child out of two child labourers between 6 and 11 does not go to school, with a gap between 59% of boys and 51% of girls. Child labourers that are deprived of an education grow up to become weak and hapless individuals completely trapped in the vicious circle of illiteracy, unemployment and poverty. Until 2014, the national committees were not able to make education compulsory because of a lack of schools but they have been able to fill the gap by building 17,000 school classes and 155 secondary schools in the country because of investments made by the Ivorian government and the support of our partners. This has made education compulsory and led to the significant increase of percentage of school enrolment in Côte d’Ivoire. Incomplete or inadequate education will lead to reduced future productivity. With universal education for children to the age of 14 (International Labor Organisation, 2003), the children will be able to learn skills and have better chances of finding suitable employment when they get older. Education will also allow them to become more aware of their rights and are less vulnerable to accepting hazardous and exploitative work. The International Labour Organization (ILO) calculated that each child would benefit from 11 per cent more income for every extra year of schooling. In the long run, the poverty cycle will be broken, and will lead to improvement of the country's economy due to a more educated generation.
Major chocolate companies are heavily reliant on Cote d'Ivoire who uses child labour to supply cocoa beans. In 2001, there were continuous media reports about child labor abuses and the chocolate industry had pledged to end the practices in Ivory Coast and Ghana by 2005. However, the chocolate industry has not taken significant steps to solve the problem within their $60-billion industry to date and child labour is used in about 90% of cocoa farms in Ivory Coast today. For example, Hershey’s has not thoroughly addressed accusations of child labor in its supply chain and refuses to release any information about where it sources its cocoa. This lack of transparency is the characteristic of the chocolate industry. They have the resources to address and eliminate child labor but consistently fail to take action. Hence, ending child labour is beneficial to these chocolate companies that have been boycotted by consumers over the issue of child labour and they can earn back the trust from the consumers by eliminating child labour completely.
In conclusion, the benefits of eliminating child labour will far outweigh the costs. Research has shown that by 2020, costs will be far outweighed by the benefits, leaving total annual benefits of around $60 billion. Today, prices and demand for cocoa are on the rise worldwide, and this offers Côte d’Ivoire a chance to fully fund their education programs using the revenue earned, reduce poverty in the country, and offer children a future different than cocoa farming by stopping child labour.
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