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.

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Severity of Child Labor in Cocoa
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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.

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Attempts to Eliminate Child Labor in Cocoa
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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.

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