On February 14, 2023, Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) submitted information to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under Section 307 of the Tariff Act documenting instances of forced child labor in the Ivorian cocoa industry. This petition comes exactly three years after we first provided CBP with information documenting child trafficking and forced labor on the Ivorian cocoa farms that source to chocolate brands in the United States. Based on this new information, we urge CBP to issue a Withhold Release Order (WRO) against cocoa produced with forced child labor in Côte d’Ivoire– thereby stopping this cocoa at the US border.
This blog post provides a short overview of the Ivorian cocoa industry and then discusses CAL’s supplemental petition, which provides additional evidence of child trafficking and forced child labor in the sector.
Forced Child Labor in the Ivorian Cocoa Industry
The West African cocoa industry continues to suffer from endemic issues of child labor, forced child labor, and farmer poverty – a result of low prices that wealthy multinational companies pay for cocoa. Although Côte d’Ivoire is the largest cocoa producer in the world, producing 40 percent of the world’s cocoa, cocoa farmers continue to make extremely low incomes, often earning below the World Bank’s poverty line – and far below a living wage. Because farmers earn so little, they often have little choice than to turn to children, their own or trafficked, to perform labor that an adult should be paid to do.
Child trafficking and forced child labor have long been an open secret in the Ivorian cocoa sector, yet there is little data on its prevalence. While many children in the cocoa industry work on farms owned by their parents, others are trafficked and work, without pay, far from their families as forced laborers. Although we do not know how many children have been trafficked and forced to work on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire, it is clear that trafficked children work on farms across the country. CAL has documented multiple instances (see below), as have others. Similarly, in 2019, Peter Whoriskey, of the Washington Post, spoke with boys who had been trafficked to work on cocoa farms. One cocoa farmer told him, “I admit that it is a kind of slavery. ... But they bring them [children] here to work, and it’s the boss who takes the money.”
Child Trafficking and Forced Labor: Two Boys from Togo
In 2022, CAL documented two cases of forced child labor in the eastern region of Côte d’Ivoire. The two boys, ages twelve or thirteen and about fifteen, had been trafficked from Togo to Côte d’Ivoire to work on cocoa farms. These children had been sent by their parents to a “guardian” – who the boys always referred to as “boss” – who then brought them to Côte d’Ivoire. In Côte d’Ivoire, they worked on two cocoa farms harvesting cocoa beans that were eventually sold to two cooperatives from which major exporters buy cocoa.
By the time we met the two boys, they had been working on the Ivorian cocoa farms for a few years. We identified several of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) indicators of forced labor to be present for these children. (These international standards help identify whether an individual is engaged in forced labor. CBP uses these indicators to determine whether there is a reasonable suspicion of forced labor in a specific context.) In the case of the two boys from Togo, we found the following indicators of forced labor: abuse of vulnerability, withholding of wages, deception, and withholding of identity documents.
Abuse of vulnerability: Children are inherently vulnerable. In this case, the boys’ parents likely consented to the children leaving their homes in Togo to work on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire. However, children cannot consent to being trafficked or to doing hazardous labor, such as using machetes and carrying heavy loads, key steps in producing cocoa. Children are especially vulnerable when they rely on a non-family member for food, pay, and housing, as in the case of these boys. In this case, the “boss” – the man who runs the farms – is taking advantage of the children’s young ages and the fact that they are far from home to keep them working on the cocoa farms.
Withholding of Wages: These two boys work on the cocoa farm all year. They told us that they receive a small amount of money at the end of each year, while the boss takes the rest. It is unclear if their parents are paid for the boys’ work – although it is unlikely.
Deception: The children told us that after working on the cocoa farm for between three and five years, they will be given a piece of land to farm themselves. The older child even said that he thinks he will receive this plot of land in about one year. However, this is unlikely as there was no evidence to support the child’s belief.
Withholding of Identity Documents: The children also reported that the boss has their birth certificates in his possession. Birth certificates are the primary form of identification for children in Côte d’Ivoire and in much of West Africa. While speaking with the boys, we asked them: “Do you have identity documents and who keeps them?” In response, the younger boy told them: “Yes, I have papers, my boss keeps them.” The second boy did not even respond, probably because the “boss” was standing next to him at the time.
Based on the collected evidence, it is clear that these two boys are forced child laborers. All cocoa that these children produce – and that is sold to local cooperatives and bought by multinational companies – is therefore tainted and should not be allowed to enter the United States under Section 307 of the Tariff Act.
Conclusion
There is little dispute that forced child labor remains a part of the West African cocoa industry. But documenting specific instances is a challenge – in large part because children are too scared to speak to outsiders who come to investigate. We hope that with this information, CBP will now issue a Withhold Release Order (WRO) on cocoa from the cooperatives buying from the children’s “boss.”
Allie Brudney is a Staff Attorney at Corporate Accountability Lab.
