ICI’s 2020 annual report looks back over the 2015-2020 strategic period during which the effectiveness of child-centred community development approaches and Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems, implemented with our partners, was confirmed. During this period over 420,000 children in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana were reached by ICI’s work, surpassing our initial target of 375,000. The report also reflects on the challenge of Covid-19 and actions taken to protect our staff and the communities we work with. Looking to the future, our annual report also explores how we plan to scale up action with our members and partners through our 2021-2026 strategy. In addition, we review ongoing innovation and learning projects, which seek to test and refine new approaches to tackle child and forced labour.

The launch of this report comes during the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour. As part of the campaign organized by Alliance 8.7 and the International Labor Organization, ICI and its members have pledged to scale up child protection systems, such as CLMRs, to cover 540,000 cocoa-growing households in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana by the end of 2021, representing an estimated 30% of the cocoa supply chain in those countries. This pledge acts as an important first step to ICI’s longer strategic ambitions laid out in the annual report and our 2021-2026 Strategy.