Child labour and forced labour have existed for thousands years, and continue to exist today.  The ILO defines the term “child labour” as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity in addition to being harmful to physical and mental development. ILO convention 29 defines the term "forced or compulsory labour" as all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.

Campaigners fought long and hard to combat the abusive labour practices that were part and parcel of the industrialisation of the West and the colonisation of the world’s developing countries. In the 19th century, the social activists of the day succeeded in lobbying their governments to pass laws to abolish forced labour and abusive labour practices.  Until then children in Europe and the United States worked in factories, alongside adults, for the many of the same reasons they do so today. Persistent poverty in some areas of the world, changes in the nature of the world’s economy and rapid change in societies have enabled their resurgence. 

Today, according to the ILO's most recent estimates, over 132 million boys and girls, aged 5-14 years old, work in agriculture around the world.  They are part of an estimated 246 million child labourers globally. Few countries and sectors totally escape this terrible blight in the 21st century.
 

Defining concepts

Not all work done by children is classified as child labour. Children’s involvement in tasks that do not affect their health and personal development, or interfere with their schooling, is not prohibited. The ILO defines child labour as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development”. Child Labour refers to work that:

• Is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and
• Interferes with their schooling by: (1) depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; (2) obliging them to leave school prematurely; or (3) requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long hours and heavy work.

The International Response

ILO convention No. 182 helped to focus the international spotlight on the need for urgent action to eliminate as a priority, the worst forms of child labour (slavery or practives similar, such as trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, illicit activities, children engaged in armed conflict, work which is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children) without losing the long term goal of the effective elimination of all child labour. Convention 138 fixed a minimum age for work. ICI’s mandate and work is based on the ILO conventions 182 and 29 (since 1930, ILO convention 29 has addressed the need to actively prohibit forced labour), and the ILO is a special advisor to the ICI Board. 
 
In recent years, labour unions, NGOs, international agencies and governments began to highlight the child and forced labour practices that persist today.  Unfortunately, there aren’t any easy answers or magical solutions. While there are now clear guidelines established by a number of international conventions, a child working alongside his or her parents on the family farm is often a result of complex social and economic issues. There may be no school nearby or efforts to identify and arrest abusive labour practices.  It is also important to note, there are some types of work, mostly in the form of chores, which do not interfere with schooling and can be a normal part of growing up in a farming community. Exploitative and forced labour, however, either of children or of adults, is entirely unacceptable or is considered a criminal act under international and national law.

At ICI, we believe child labour cannot be tackled by external action alone or in isolation from local concerns. We believe within the context of the agricultural environment, communities can visualise and implement change themselves.  By creating programmes driven by local cocoa-growing communities and providing people with practical tools, ICI is changing the way cocoa is grown and ensuring child and forced labour become a phenomena of the past. 

Download the background documents  child and forced labour in cocoa growing and child labour, basic facts.