CHILD LABOR IN GHANA'S COCOA INDUSTRY: HIGH STAKES

UNCLAS ACCRA 000754 SIPDIS DOL FOR E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: EAID ECON EIND ELAB ETRD PGOV SUBJECT: CHILD LABOR IN GHANA'S COCOA INDUSTRY: HIGH STAKES FOR U.S. CHOCOLATE MAKERS ¶1. (SBU) Summary: At least 80,000 children are estimated to be working in Ghana's cocoa industry. Several programs are in place to eliminate child labor in this sector. However, the problem in Ghana and Cote d,Ivoire fueled Congressional demands for U.S. industry to certify their chocolate as child labor-free by July 1, 2005. U.S. industry reps say they are not expecting to have a certification system in place, but hope to forestall legislation that could do significant damage to their industry and to cocoa producers of West Africa, including to Ghana's 1.1 billion USD cocoa industry. End Summary. -------------- Severity of Child Labor in Cocoa -------------- ¶2. (U) Estimates of children toiling on Ghana's cocoa farms range from a more credible level of fewer than 80,000 to as high as 1.6 million. Although the vast majority of children working on farms are the dependents of cocoa farmers and are not missing school due to their work, they may be exposed to hazardous conditions. An International Institute of Tropical Agriculture study found that roughly half of children employed on cocoa farms were involved in clearing fields by machete. IITA also found that less than 1 percent of children on cocoa farms were exposed to pesticides. According to the Ghana Health Service, the majority of children in the industry face some form of hazard, including falls, physical strains, bacterial infections, exposure to insects, snakes and parasites and excessive exposure to the elements. -------------- Attempts to Eliminate Child Labor in Cocoa -------------- ¶3. (U) The International Labor Organization (ILO)'s West African Commercial Agriculture Project (WACAP) uses district-level and community-level committees to identify and remove children from harmful labor in Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Cameroon and Guinea. Established with $5 million in U.S. Department of Labor funding and $1 million from industry, the program pays for such children to attend school or to seek vocational training and offers small income replacements to some poor families when their children quit working. In Ghana, child monitors in 52 pilot communities ensure that children are attending school and do not return to work. Officials at the district assemblies and Ghana's Ministry of Manpower, Youth and Employment (MMYE) process the monitoring data from the field to ensure compliance. ¶4. (U) UNICEF has committed to support WACAP's sensitization efforts in 52 communities, to contribute to child monitoring where possible and to fund research on child labor in cocoa farming. CARE International's pilot Youth Education and Skills (YES) project uses radio social marketing and interactive functional literacy and life skills curricula to discourage child labor in cocoa farms in the Sefwi Wiawso District of the Western Region. ¶5. (SBU) These approaches face a variety of challenges. They do not adequately address the poverty and lack of rural schools, which are chief contributors to child labor. Programs that offer to pay school fees for families claiming to have child laborers are costly and open to abuse. In addition, such programs cannot be easily expanded from their current size to address child labor sector-wide. To support WACAP, MMYE created a two-person Child Labor Unit that has been working nearly full-time for six months to institute a child labor monitoring system. The current program taxes resource-strapped district assemblies and the MMYE, which have many competing policy imperatives. Even more challenging, this program has been applied only to communities that already have schools, whereas the most needy communities may lack schools altogether. -------------- High