Hershey, a partner of the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), has released its latest sustainability report underlining its progress tackling child labour through Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS).
The systems, implemented with the support of ICI, covered over 68,000 children in Hershey’s West African supply chain in 2019, the report details. Over 4,600 identified as carrying out inappropriate work are in the process of receiving some form of remediation. Remediation actions implemented in 2019 included the renovation of 73 classrooms. Beyond this support other work was undertaken to prevent future cases by distributing 9,000 school kits and obtaining over 1,200 birth certificates for children, enabling them to attend school.
ICI congratulates its partner Hershey on putting human rights due diligence into practice and for its strong commitment to expand the CLMRS to cover 125,000 children by 2025. Transparent reporting, as seen in its sustainability report, will be an essential part of this journey, along which ICI will provide ongoing support to the roll out of the CLMRS.
Read Hershey’s Sharing Goodness 2019 Sustainability Report