In September 2001, global chocolate and cocoa industry representatives signed an agreement, known as the “Harkin-Engel Protocol”. It has been an important catalyst for change in the labour practices within the cocoa in West Africa. A key action has been to create the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), an independent multi-stakeholder foundation working with civil society, industry and origin governments to strengthen collective child labour mitigation efforts.

Building on the knowledge from the past decade, the global chocolate and cocoa industry signed on 13 September 2010 a historic agreement referred to as the “Framework for Action” with the US Department of Labour and the governments of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire to affirm our shared commitment to achieving a significant reduction in the Worst Forms of Child Labour in cocoa farming communities in West Africa through education and training; help for vulnerable families; measures to address  farm safety issues, and monitoring.

The 2012 annual report, available in January 2013, will report about further commitments from the Goverments of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, MondelÄ“z International, The Hershey Company, Nestle, Barry Callebaut, Ferrero and Mars. See 2012 annual report below.

To date, the private sector has invested collectively more than 73 MIO Euros in projects and programs to address the social needs of sustainability in the cocoa supply chain in particular in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Additional individual company programmes bring the overall investment figure substantially higher. Visit the Responsible Cocoa website to learn more.

On 23rd November 2012 at the closing ceremony of the first World Cocoa Conference which took place in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, CAOBISCO joined cocoa producing country governments, cocoa and chocolate companies and other International and European organisations in signing the Abidjan Declaration.

Signing the declaration demonstrated the industry’s commitment to work with supply chain partners towards a sustainable world cocoa economy. See CAOBISCO Statement

Additional information:

Read the statement « The cocoa supply-chain reaffirms its commitment to improve farmers’ livelihoods and reinforce measures to combat the worst forms of child labour»