Human Rights
There is a wide range of human rights issues facing cocoa-producing communities, including child labour, gender inequality, and labour rights violations. However, the list is long and the above issues are no means comprehensive.
Living Income
Though every issue requires specific approaches, at the root of all these human rights issues is the structural poverty of rural communities. As living income is a human right, any human rights approach to the challenges in the cocoa sector should include strategies to address poverty and to close the living income gap.
Child Labour
Understanding what does and does not constitute child labour is an important first step in this conversation. Not all work done by children on a farm is child labour. However, there are 1.5 million children in West Africa’s cocoa farms that are performing age-inappropriate labour, putting them in Child Labour. Most of them are involved in hazardous labour, which also makes it the Worst Forms of Child Labour.
Gender Equality
Women run many cocoa farms in West Africa. Their role is often not recognised or remunerated accordingly. In many cases, women are excluded from land ownership and they often do not share in the rewards of the family’s farms. Additionally, women are often confronted with sociocultural systems excluding them from many aspects of society.
Worker Rights
Though cocoa is largely grown by smallholders, wage labourers and seasonal hired workers are common in the cocoa sector across the world. The situation of most workers is precarious. Many work on a temporary basis without worker protection, and most earn much less than a living wage. Many cocoa farms and plantations in Latin America use hired labour; large plantations even depend on it. This can lead to challenges around labour rights and the freedom of association.
Farmer Organisation
Farmer cooperatives play a crucial role in advocating for fair pricing and better working conditions. Strengthening these cooperatives ensures that farmers have greater bargaining power and access to essential resources such as financial services, training, and market connections.
Progress made
Producing nations are making progress in addressing key challenges, notably in access to education, health care, electrification and drinking water in rural areas. Efforts are also being undertaken to strengthen producer price, roll out of social security systems, and the establishment of the interprofessional organisation to defend the rights and interests of producers.
The Role of VOICE Network
In our first 15 years, we have focused mainly our attention on advocating for greater ambition to combat child labour through our engagement with the Child Labor Cocoa Coordinating Group. We’ve also promoted community and landscapes interventions, and emphasized the key role of governance in creating an enabling environment.
Moving forward, we want to carry on evidence-based advocacy on child labour but also on gender equality and labour rights and mobilize front runners and stakeholders for more actions on the ground.
