US embassy cable - 05ACCRA754

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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High