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Considerations in Setting Future Directions for Eliminating WFCL and FAL in the Cocoa Sector

In keeping with its mandate of transparency and with the goal of supporting future strategies, the ICVB offers the following comments and recommendations for consideration by stakeholders as they design future programs.
Read the recommendations report here.

ICVB Vision Statement

Verification is an essential step in assessing labor conditions in cocoa-growing communities in West Africa. The ICVB holds the strong conviction that accurate data will help guide strategic planning and programming to effectively address potential areas of concern, including child and forced adult labor. Properly verified data will ensure that future remediation activities are more strategic, cost-effective, targeted and synergistic. Our true stakeholders are the cocoa farmers and children and we measure our success or failure by how well their lives improve, in part, due to our work. Accurate data matters.

The ICVB Comments on the Publication of the US Department of Labor's Reports on Child and Forced Labor

The International Cocoa Verification Board (ICVB) convened in New York on September 9 10, 2009. The main objective of the meeting was to review progress to date and outline next steps regarding the implementation of the verifiers' recommendations by the governments of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire as part of an unprecedented multi-stakeholder effort to address the incidence of Forced Adult Labor and Worst Forms of Child Labor in the cocoa sector in both countries.

While in session, the ICVB was informed of the Department of Labor's September 10th publication of reports designed to raise awareness and curb the incidence of child labor and forced labor, specifically the 'List of Goods produced by Child or Forced labor' required by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005 (TVPRA) and the 'List of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Labor' issued pursuant to Executive Order 13126 of 1999.

The ICVB commends the Department of Labor's initiative to take strong action to fight forced labor globally. However, while the TVPRA report recognizes the efforts undertaken by the cocoa industry and the governments of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, cocoa is listed alongside products that have not undertaken a similar multi-year, multi-million dollar initiative engaging all stakeholders (civil society, governments and industry) within the supply chain.

Efforts undertaken since the signing of the Harkin - Engel Protocol in 2001 have yielded progress in many areas:
  • Both governments conducted pilot and scaled-up surveys that were found to be statistically credible by internationally recognized independent verifiers.
  • These surveys, along with others recently completed, provide the critical baseline upon which ongoing remediation strategies are based.
  • Upon the completion of a statistical weighting process, expected in the very near future, the results of these surveys will be representative of the entire cocoa sector in both countries. These sector wide results will more clearly reflect the magnitude and extent of the challenge, thereby allowing both governments to intensify efforts and shift limited resources from surveys into remediation programs.
  • Both governments have designed and begun implementing national remediation plans (that were informed by, and are on file with, the ILO). A community-based child labor monitoring system (CLMS) -- an approach often recommended by the ILO - is under development in both countries.
  • Governments of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire have each invested over two million dollars in remediation programs alone in response to the findings in their certification surveys.
  • Additionally the global chocolate and cocoa industry has invested more than US $75 million since 2001 to improve conditions and support the National Action Plans in both countries.
  • Both governments and industry publicly acknowledged their willingness to take action on the verifiers' most important findings notably that additional targeted research on trafficking and forced adult labor is needed (and appropriate actions taken as recommended by the research).
  • Both governments are sharing experiences of successful approaches to addressing the Worst Forms of Child Labor and Forced Adult Labor through the creation of a Joint Technical Working Group.

The ICVB notes that the US Department of Labor's lists draw on the very information collected by both governments as part of this ground-breaking initiative.

While the ICVB supports the need for increased publicly available information regarding the production of goods using child labor or forced labor; it believes that the current process of listing all products and all countries in the same manner, characterizes each country and product as having been produced in an equivalent fashion with an equal approach to the issue being taken by each country. As a matter of principle, the ICVB believes this approach can be counterproductive, because it does not recognize specific efforts that have been initiated and that are in fact making a difference for children within the supply chains in question. In fact, inclusion of products on the Executive Order list, with its potential prohibition of purchasing by the US Government, may jeopardize the very efforts that are underway to address this critically important issue.

The ICVB further recommends that in the future, the US Department of Labor creates a tiered list based on clearly defined criteria that demonstrates a degree of engagement and progress against the issue. For example, the list could possess 'tiers' related to the following:
  1. Countries that violate human rights within a specific supply chain and do not recognize nor address the problem.
  2. Countries that have clearly identified and acknowledge the existence of a problem and are in the very early stages of addressing it.
  3. Countries that have identified the issue and are making appreciable and clearly defined efforts at addressing it.

The ICVB welcomes the US Department of Labor's process to allow adequate time for public comment on the Executive Order List.