The National Committee for Monitoring Actions against Trafficking, Exploitation and Child Labour of the Ivorian authorities presented its 2015-2017 National Action Plan in Abidjan on the 15th of December. With a global cost of 12 920 296 600 CFA or $ 21 million, this plan will be funded mainly by the Government and its partners, and aims to reduce the rate of child labourers by 30% in all sectors. The new National Action Plan focuses on four strategic areas:

  • Prevention: improvement of the legislative and regulatory framework: ratification of Convention 189 on domestic work;
  • continuation of awareness campaigns;
  • improvement of socio-economic conditions of the cocoa communities (500 income generating activities, 200 Micro credits, 6 clinics, 6 nursing homes, 6 ambulances, 21 village pumps)
  • training/education: construction and equipment of 2,000 classrooms, 333 school canteens, 665 residences for teachers per year, distribution of 6,000 school kits
  • improvement of productivity (700,000 hectares insecticide, 340,000 hectares fungicide; 40,000 in improved seeds)

Protection: save and attend to at least 400,000 child victims; build shelters for child victims in Ferké (North) and Soubré (South-West); strengthen sub-regional cooperation regarding border control.

Repression: train and equip professionals responsible for law enforcement; organize police operations and prosecute child operators.

Programme monitoring: improve the coordination of control activities; conduct a national multi-sectoral survey in 2017 on the WFCL (Worst Forms of Child Labour); extend the observation and monitoring system of child labour in Côte d'Ivoire (Sosteci) to 20 new departments.

As a partner of the Ivorian Government, ICI will support this programme as part of its future activities. In particular, with a grant of $ 4.5 million or 2.7 billion CFA francs obtained from the Department of Labour of the United States which ICI won thanks to the experience gained over several years in the cocoa growing areas including education, training and community development.

The International Cocoa Initiative will expand the collaboration with its industrial partners in new areas of cocoa-growing, intensify and diversify its activities with rural communities in order to reach a larger number of beneficiaries and contribute to the significant reduction in child labour in our intervention areas.