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The International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) has developed a good practice in which community registers are used to identify children engaged in, or at risk of, child labour in cocoa production.

In Côte d’Ivoire, older children (defined here as aged 12-17) face a number of challenges in post-primary education. Underperformance is an issue with enrolment and completion rates remaining low and quality of education needing improvement. Access to education is low for girls, poor families and those living in rural areas. Improving quality of and access to education would yield significant benefits. Cocoa-producing areas, in particular, would benefit in terms of reduced poverty, better employment prospects and the reduction of child labour.

In Ghana’s cocoa-growing communities, older children aged 15 to 17 are most at risk of hazardous child labour. Limited opportunities to attend senior secondary school or Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) mean that older children instead engage in cocoa farming, where they are at risk of hazardous child labour involvement. Higher levels of educational attainment play a critical role in reducing both child labour and household poverty.

The United States Department of Labor regularly publishes a report on the Findings of the Worst Forms of Child Labour for all countries worldwide.

Recent declines in world cocoa prices are likely to place additional pressure on already financially-constrained smallholder cocoa farmers in West Africa if they result in sustained lower farm-gate prices paid to farmers. Several studies indicate that the majority of cocoa farmers live in extreme poverty, earning a per capita daily cocoa income of between $0.40-1.60. Any further lowering of farmer incomes as a result of declining cocoa prices could exacerbate the risk of child labour for a number of reasons.