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Stop Child Labour promotes Child Labour Free Zones at Cocoa Workshop in Brussels

Stop Child Labour has shared practical examples of successful action during the Cocoa Worksop ‘Cocoa, an unsavoury sweet?’ organised by the European Commission in Brussel, 21th of March 2018. By doing so Stop Child Labour sought to contribute to accelerating the elimination of child labour in the cocoa production and value chains.

Cocoa is one of the most common agricultural commodities produced with a high prevalence of child labour. There are 2.1 million children alone estimated to be engaged in child labour in the cocoa supply chains of major producer countries’ Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, which together account for 60 % of total world production.

While chocolate consumption increases in the European Union and globally, the cocoa industry is dominated by low incomes for producers, poor and unsafe working conditions and cheap child labour. Indeed, many cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana live under the extreme poverty line.

For this workshop, the EU gathered key stakeholders to assess progress, practices and challenges to eradicate child labour from the cocoa sector.

Read more about the Cocoa Workshop here.

Watch a video with contributions to the discussion of Stop Child Labour and others here.