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Business News for Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Source: Goldstreet Business
2020-10-21
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Ghanaian government officials, as well as public commentators, are questioning the findings of a new report based on a recent study funded by the United States government that claims that the use of child labor has increased on cocoa farms in Ghana and Ivory Coast over the past decade despite industry promises to reduce it The new report’s findings support an earlier one, which was similarly disputed by both West African countries.
According to the new report, the levels are now higher than in 2010, when companies like Mars, Hershey, Nestlé and Cargill agreed to reduce the worst forms of child labor in the cocoa sectors of Ghana and Ivory Coast by 70% by 2020. .
The two West African countries, which together produce about two-thirds of the world’s cocoa, had questioned the methodology used in an earlier version of the report prepared by researchers at the University of Chicago in April this year.
The Ghanaian government has again questioned the data in the revised report, released Monday after the US Department of Labor appointed a group of independent experts to conduct a review.
The Ghanaian government was quoted in Monday’s report questioning the reliability of figures showing a reduction in the number of working children from the April estimate, while maintaining a similar prevalence rate.
“This raises astonishment about the reliability of the findings for any meaningful policy formulation and implementation,” said the Ghana Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations.
However, the government, like that of Côte d’Ivoire, has reiterated its commitment to eradicating child labor in cocoa cultivation.
But this is seen locally as an act of tact, rather than accepting blame for an infraction that is vastly exaggerated at best.
While Ghanaian government officials publicly question the accuracy of the data, and privately question the motives behind the report, public commentators and labor experts point out that those who conducted the study and evaluated the results simply do not understand the ways in which that West African rural societies work.
They point out that, in fact, most of the children identified as victims of child labor in the report are simply children helping their parents on the farm after school; most of the time on a voluntary basis as a result of a sense of responsibility towards the family that is instilled in them at an early stage in local society.
Even some child rights advocates agree that the report is largely based on misconceptions. One asks, under strict condition of anonymity: “Why would a parent prevent their child from going to school just to work on a cocoa farm, despite the fact that the school is not only free, but also offers free meals? “
Instructively, that child rights defender does not want to be cited for fear of losing her funding, which comes in part indirectly from the United States government. Some analysts claim that the same prudent diplomacy is behind the rather dovish reaction from the governments of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire: neither of them wants to shake the ship that carries substantial foreign aid to their respective coffers.
However, none of this completely changes the fact that true child labor still exists in both countries, which even critics of the report admit; they simply insist that the report grossly exaggerates it.
Some critics go further by alleging an Oliver Stone-type conspiracy theory behind the report. They allege that both countries are being deliberately put on the defensive in retaliation for their recent success in imposing an additional “living standard differential” of $ 400 per metric ton on the cocoa beans they export. These conspiracy theorists claim that the report is part of a larger scheme to ensure that the two countries are not comfortable enough to try more, even more ambitious efforts to sway cocoa prices in their favor.
US lawmakers have criticized the industry and US customs authorities asked cocoa traders earlier this year to report where and when they encounter child labor in their supply chains.
Monday’s report cut the estimate of the number of children currently working in cocoa production in the two countries to 1.56 million, from more than 2 million in the April study, saying it had changed the way it weighed your data. He did not give comparative totals from 10 years earlier.
But he said that the proportion of children from agricultural households in cocoa growing areas engaged in child labor in the cocoa sector in Ivory Coast and Ghana had risen to 45% in 2018/19 from 31% in 2008/09 .
The corresponding levels for hazardous jobs had risen from 30% to 43%, it added.
Despite efforts made by governments, industry and other key stakeholders in the fight against child labor and hazardous child labor over the past 10 years, the prevalence rates of child labor and hazardous child labor did not decline ”Says the report.
He added that child labor rates had stabilized since the last survey in 2013/14 and school attendance in cocoa-producing areas had increased even as cocoa production increased.
World Cocoa Foundation President Richard Scobey said the report shows that child labor remains a persistent challenge, but government and company programs to reduce it are making a difference.
“Goals to reduce child labor were set without fully understanding the complexity and scale of a challenge strongly associated with poverty in rural Africa and did not anticipate the significant increase in cocoa production over the past decade,” he added it’s a statement.
The International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), a foundation backed by industry and civil society, said what it called past sampling errors made it difficult to draw accurate comparisons over time.
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