Harkin–Engel Protocol
The industry's pledge to reduce child labor in Ivory Coast and Ghana by 70%, as per the Protocol, had not been met by late 2015; the deadline was again extended, to 2020.
[2] In late 2000 a BBC documentary reported the use of enslaved children in the production of cocoa—the main ingredient in chocolate[3]— in West Africa.
[14] The international cocoa industry strongly opposed it and the Chocolate Manufacturers Association hired former senators George Mitchell and Bob Dole to lobby against it.
[1] It was signed and witnessed by the heads of eight major chocolate companies, Harkin, Engel, Senator Herb Kohl, the ambassador of Côte d'Ivoire, the director of the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labor, and others.
[1] The Harkin–Engel Protocol is a voluntary public-private agreement to eliminate the worst forms of child labor (defined according to the International Labour Organization (ILO)'s Convention 182) in the growth and processing of cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.
[1] The agreement laid out a series of date-specific actions, including the development of voluntary standards of public certification.
The parties agreed to a six-article plan: A 2001 Joint Statement extended the protocol to also identify and eliminate forced labor (defined according to ILO Convention 29) in the production of cocoa.
[17] The protocol laid out a non-binding agreement for the cocoa industry to regulate itself without any legal implications,[14] but Engel threatened to reintroduce legislation if the deadlines were not met.
[14] By July 2005—the deadline date—the cocoa industry made progress on their goal to eliminate the worst forms of child labor.
[19] Before the protocol was signed, the cocoa industry acknowledged the problem of forced child labor to address part of Article 1.
[21] The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) was assigned to survey West Africans about children in cocoa production.
The Joint Statement stated industry would form a certification system for half of the growing regions in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana.
[26][29] In 2006, the Payson Center reported progress had been made, but children were still working in cocoa production, including performing dangerous tasks, and regularly miss school.
"[30] After the deadline passed, the International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit in 2005 under the Alien Tort Claims Act against Nestlé, Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland on behalf of three Malian children.
The suit alleged the children were trafficked to Côte d'Ivoire, forced into slavery, and experienced frequent beatings on a cocoa plantation.
In 2006–07 the ICI had 17 training sessions in Côte d'Ivoire and 23 in Ghana to sensitize the governmental officials, police and media about child and adult labor practices.
The cocoa industry committed to work with the governments of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana to set up independent certification by the end of 2010; assist the governments to target remediation efforts based on the independent certification; and support the ICI as it expands to more local communities and provide training on safe labor practices.
[38] Thus contractors must prove they have made a good faith effort to determine if cocoa was produced under forced labor.
The responsibility of the US Department of Labor is to commit $10 million in 2010 for a multi-year program to support the framework and report on the progress of these efforts.
[41] Household surveys and governmental research in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana showed that there were 1.8 million children working in cocoa agriculture.
These activities include withdrawal, rehabilitation, reinsertion, education and vocational training and these efforts were attributed to funding related to the Harkin–Engel Protocol.
The report suggested that it would be an uphill battle to improve the situation:[45] According to the 2015 edition of the Cocoa Barometer, a biennial report examining the economics of cocoa that's published by a consortium of nonprofits, the average farmer in Ghana in the 2013–14 growing season made just 84¢ per day, and farmers in Ivory Coast a mere 50¢.
"[46] Reported in 2018, a 3-year pilot program – conducted by Nestlé with 26,000 farmers mostly located in Côte d'Ivoire – observed a 51% decrease in the number of children doing hazardous jobs in cocoa farming.
A report later that year by New Food Economy stated that the Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems implemented by the International Cocoa Initiative and its partners has been useful, but "they are currently reaching less than 20 percent of the over two million children impacted".
[54] In 2021, the nongovernmental organization International Rights Advocates filed a lawsuit on behalf of eight former child workers, accusing several multinational chocolate producers of aiding and abetting the illegal enslavement of children.
[58] In 2012, Miki Mistrati [da], creator of the award-winning documentary, The Dark Side of Chocolate, claimed the protocol is just "a document and politics" because there has been no progress.
