Annual Report 2022

THE INTERNATIONAL COCOA INITIATIVE

ICI is a non-profit foundation that works to ensure a better future for children in cocoa-growing communities. It is a multi-stakeholder partnership advancing the elimination of child labour and forced labour, by uniting the forces of the cocoa and chocolate industry, civil society, farming communities, governments, international organisations, and donors.

ICI has been working in cocoa-growing communities in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana since 2007 and within that time has helped advance quantified progress in the fight against child labour in cocoa. ICI’s innovation and learning projects, sharing of good practice, coordination efforts and technical advocacy work also contribute to wider impact on the cocoa sector as a whole, in addition to its direct action, supporting the scale up of impact.

Our vision

ICI’s vision is of thriving cocoa-growing communities within a dignified, sustainable and responsibly managed cocoa supply chain, where child rights and human rights
are protected and respected, and where child labour and forced labour have been eliminated.

Our mission

ICI works together with its partners to improve the lives of children and adults at risk of child labour or forced labour in cocoa-growing communities. ICI innovates, catalyses and supports the development, implementation and scale-up of effective policies and practices that promote child rights and that prevent or remediate child labour and forced labour.

Message from the Executive Director

Reflecting back on 2022, we are proud of our actions to prevent and address child labour and forced labour in West Africa. While much remains to be done, we have continued to learn, to innovate and test new approaches, to build capacity and to advocate for increased implementation, which will allow us to take our work even further in cocoa-growing communities.

By the end of 2022, thanks to the collective efforts of our members across industry and civil society, 707,925 households in West Africa have been covered by CLMRS or equivalent systems (see The Year in Numbers) This marks an improvement of almost 118,000 more households covered since 2021 and another step toward our ultimate goal of 100% coverage of the cocoa supply chain in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana with CLMRS or equivalent systems.

These are strides that we could not make without the efforts of the collective. We have always maintained that child labour cannot be solved by any one actor alone, and we are pleased to continue to work with civil society organisations, the cocoa and chocolate industry and diverse government stakeholders to tackle this challenge. In 2022, we welcomed Cocoasource, ETG and Starbucks as new members (see ICI members, contributing partners and other donors).

We continued our work to advance learning, and to develop and implement innovative approaches that will directly impact cocoa-growing communities.

Throughout the year, we published several studies which explored the importance of education (see Support to prevent and address child labour), focusing on innovative teaching methods to help children learn and to encourage out-of-school children to join the schooling system, and on the protective effect of education on child wellbeing. In terms of innovative approaches, we continued our pilot project on Child Friendly Spaces, we studied the impact of cash transfers in combination with labour vouchers on cocoa communities, we continued to explore the potential of Landscape approaches, in addition to ways to prevent and address forced labour (see Innovation).

This year also saw the continued evolution of policy on an international level which will affect the cocoa sector directly (see Technical Advocacy) including the publication of the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CS3D) proposal which would require companies operating within the EU to conduct human rights due diligence.

ICI continued its work with the Cocoa Coalition to advocate for robust EU legislation that will bring real benefits to cocoa-growing communities. We also participated in the US Department of Labour-led Child Labour in Cocoa Coordination Group discussions, that aim to define a new framework to shape future work of all actors in tackling child labour. Discussions will continue in 2023 with ICI taking on the role of Coordinating Technical Partner.

We look forward to continuing this work. As an organisation, we are filled with hope that the actions of the collective to reduce child labour and strengthen child protection and human rights in cocoa-producing areas will be realised.

Matthias Lange, ICI Executive Director

By the end of 2022,

707,925 households were covered*

Thanks to the collective efforts of our members across industry and civil society, 707,925 households in West Africa have been covered by a CLMRS or equivalent human rights due diligence system.

679,704 households monitored**

Of these, 679,704 households in West Africa have been monitored.

190,779 households covered* by ICI-implemented or supported CLMRS

271,361 children were interviewed from the 190,779 households covered* by ICI‑implemented or supported CLMRS.

*Covered means that a household is registered in a CLMRS, and a monitoring visit or household-level risk assessment has been done.
**Monitored means that a household is registered in a CLMRS and a monitoring visit has been done.

See the What is a CLMRS? below.

ICI-implemented or supported CLMRS make up about 27% of the total number of households covered. The remaining 73% are covered by systems run independently by ICI members or cooperatives, showing the widespread adoption of such an approach in the sector.

The proportion of households covered by ICI-implemented or supported systems is decreasing year on year, in line with our 2021–2026 strategy. We believe we can have a larger impact by supporting others to put in place systems and approaches that we know work, while we continue to test and improve on them.

What is a CLMRS?

Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems are systems designed to identify, address, and prevent child labour. They are built around community facilitators (often farmers themselves) who are connected to cocoa-farming cooperatives. These facilitators visit households, raise awareness on the dangers of child labour, and identify children engaged in hazardous work. If a child is found in child labour, they are recorded in the system and support is provided to the child, their family and/or community.

Support can include things like help to access quality education, support for farmer livelihoods, or women’s empowerment.

Percentages calculated on data from the launch of the CLMRS – end 2022

26%* of children were found in child labour
26% of children interviewed were identified in child labour.

78%* of children received support
78% of children in the system received support to prevent and address child labour.

36%* out of child labour
36% of those found in child labour are no longer in child labour after two consecutive follow up visits.

Most common hazardous tasks
The most common hazardous tasks were carrying heavy loads, using sharp tools for weeding or breaking cocoa pods, or using sharp tools overhead to harvest cocoa pods.

Carrying heavy loads

Using sharp tools

Harvesting overhead

*The data above comes from ICI-implemented CLMRS in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana only.

How do we measure when children are “out of child labour”?

Child labour is a complex problem. Even after receiving support, it is not always easy for a child to stop working definitively, especially as the risk of child labour increases as a child grows older. This is why it is important to conduct regular follow-up visits – facilitators aim to do so every six months – to check how children are getting on and determine whether further support is required.

Data collected by the CLMRS shows us that 43% of children found in child labour have stopped doing hazardous work by their first follow-up visit. But by their next visit, some are involved in child labour once again. Data suggests that if children have stopped doing hazardous tasks for at least two consecutive visits, they are much less likely to return to child labour again in the future. This is why we have chosen to look at two consecutive follow up visits, when measuring whether the child is out of
child labour which equates to 36%.

The role of Monitoring and Remediation Agents in cocoa communities

Yah N'Guessan

Within a CLMRS, community facilitators, often farmers themselves and members of the local community, visit households, raise awareness on the dangers of child labour and identify children engaged in hazardous work so support can be provided (for more information, see What is a CLMRS?).

The work of these community facilitators is often organised and supported by Monitoring and Remediation Agents (MRA), usually linked to a cooperative. Yah N’Guessan, currently a Programme Assistant with ICI’s Divo office in Côte d’Ivoire, started out his work tackling child labour in cocoa communities as an MRA. He tells us more about the importance of the role, that he performed for 3 years with the Coopérative Agricole Bincadi de Buyo.

“One of the things I liked the most about my job as an MRA was working so closely with cocoa farmers themselves, in addition to looking after a team of community facilitators. It is the MRA’s job to be a support for the community facilitators, to help them identify children in child labour and to follow up on cases that have been identified and support provided. In order to identify children in child labour correctly, it is important that community facilitators understand what child labour is and the tasks that children can and can’t do. In addition, they need to have a good relationship with the farmers and master child interviewing techniques. Visiting all households, following up on children found in child labour, good quality data, and providing support to children and families are all key to ensuring a CLMRS functions well.”

Anita Akaffou
AKAFFOU Anita Epouse ATSE is an MRA who has been working with the CAYAT cooperative in Côte d’Ivoire since 2019. The role of MRA is not traditionally held by women, a situation ICI and its partners have been trying to change, and Anita explains why her experience has been so valuable both for the CLMRS, the children she is supporting and her own family and community.

“I have been doing this job since 2019 and I think women are well suited to the role. Children confide in us easily and I think women can tell when children are sad. What I like most about the job is that the work we do really helps children. Parents understand better the dangers of child labour and promise to change, and many children have gone to school as a result. For me, a good MRA has to be observant and attentive, in addition to respecting the meetings organised with farmers. There are some challenges for women in this role, it wasn’t easy for me in the beginning, and it did cause tension in my household. But now things have improved, I can contribute to household expenses, my husband helps me out sometimes and is proud of me when I give awareness-raising sessions. Before, I used to struggle speaking in public, now I am more comfortable with it. People know me now in the community, and I am able to contribute to the costs associated with my children’s schooling.”

When a child is identified at risk, we provide support tailored to the needs of the individual child, family or community.

Here are some examples of support provided within ICI-implemented CLMRS:

Image	School kits Usually a backpack, a school uniform and school supplies.
Image	Providing birth certificates In Côte d'Ivoire, birth certificates are needed by every student in order to register for secondary school.
Image	Annual registrations to school, bridging classes, tutoring, and apprenticeships
Image	Support to develop new income‑generating activities These activities aid farmers in diversifying and improving their income.
Image	Improved education facilities Including for example, new schools, classrooms, canteens, toilet blocks and wells.

In 2022, we explored the effects of bridging classes combined with innovative teaching methods, and found that child labour more than halved.
Bridging classes are a type of accelerated education programme to help out-of-school children catch up on missed learning and get back into the classroom. We tested their impact when they use innovative teaching methods and child-paced learning, and found that child labour was more than halved.

Image	99.8% of children re-joined the mainstream school system
Image	72% of children were still in school after a year
Image	Prevalence of child labour more than halved from 63% prevalence to 23% prevalence

For more information on this study, see Exploring the importance of education in cocoa-growing communities in Support to prevent and address child labour.

Building brighter futures: Apprenticeships to support older children to learn new skills

A lack of easy access to secondary education, combined with the financial pressures of having to contribute to the household, often means that older children in cocoa-growing communities begin working on cocoa farms instead of continuing their schooling. As part of our commitment to tackling child labour in cocoa-growing communities, together with our partners we provide older children who are at risk of, or involved in, child labour, with access to apprenticeship programmes so that they can learn new skills and pursue different career paths.

Identified by ICI’s Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS) in 2020, it became clear that Charlotte
Asiamah, a young woman from Ewiase, a cocoa-growing community in the Obuasi Municipality of Ghana, had been engaging in hazardous tasks on the family farm. Charlotte was selected to participate in an apprenticeship programme and chose hairdressing as the craft she wanted to learn. Three years later, ahead of her graduation, Charlotte reflects on the experience.

“I used to engage in work with my parents on the farm after Junior High School because my parents could not afford to enrol me in an apprenticeship or continue my education. I used to harvest and break cocoa pods with cutlasses and other sharp objects, apply agro-chemicals on the farm, and sometimes burn bushes. It was very exhausting for me, but I was doing it with the hope that one day, my father will get money to enrol me in an apprenticeship.”

Excited to graduate, Charlotte is hopeful for the future. “Now I feel excited about my upcoming exams, the fact that I will also graduate and be a professional.” Charlotte went on to explain that if not for the apprenticeship programme, she would not have gained this important skill and would still be engaging in the hazardous activities on the cocoa farm as she used to.

Creating opportunities for women in cocoa communities to thrive

Women play an important role in cocoa-growing communities, involved in both the farming itself and taking care of household needs with tasks on cocoa farms and taking care of household needs and care work, which enables other labourers to be productive.

The important role women play in cocoa communities can sometimes be overlooked, but the Cellule Féminine de
Renforcement Economique (CFREC) aims to change that. Implemented by ICI in certain cocoa communities in Côte
d’Ivoire, the CFREC are micro-financing groups that can have an important impact on social and economic development, women’s autonomy and on reinforcing quality education.

Mehon Posson Honorine, a trader and cocoa producer from Pinhou, near Téady in Côte d'Ivoire, is a compelling example of how the CFREC can change lives and create success stories for women in cocoa communities. Honorine, originally the owner of a small shop selling refreshments, is now involved in many successful business activities in her community. Explaining how valuable the CFREC has been, she smiled,

“The CFREC has done me and my family a lot of good. This year I have enrolled my children in school. I have already settled everything, including my son’s schooling in Duékoué. I have a son who has passed his baccalaureate, I have to go with him to Abidjan."

After having fallen on difficult times, Honorine, mother of five children, and her husband, a mason's apprentice at the time, had difficulties supporting their family financially. She heard about the CFREC from a cocoa producer in her community and decided to join in 2021. One year later, Honorine is the owner of two rubber tree fields and a two-hectare cocoa field. She is also involved in several other income-generating activities, which include a refreshments kiosk, a business where she rents out furniture for events, and she has also provided support to other community members in need.

She and her husband now farm the fields together and the profits from the harvest, in addition to the income from her other activities, allow them to provide for their children and live more comfortably.

Exploring the importance of education in cocoa communities

Much of the support provided to cocoa-growing households is linked to improving access to quality education, for example providing school kits, improving school infrastructure and enrolling children in bridging classes. In 2022, ICI published a number of studies that confirm the key benefits that education can bring, in addition to highlighting the methods and approaches that can be particularly beneficial.

Quality education and a protective environment help children learn

Between 2019 and 2021, in partnership with the Ministry of Education of Côte d’Ivoire, we implemented a pilot project in eight cocoa-growing communities in Côte d’Ivoire, reaching 2,200 pupils, to improve teaching, learning and school facilities for primary school children.

The project combined a number of activities focusing on improving infrastructure such as refurbishing classrooms, installing play equipment and creating libraries; improving teaching methods including the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) methodology for child-paced learning, and positive discipline; in addition to providing awareness raising among teachers, parents, students and community members on child rights and child labour. Many of these activities had already been tested in different projects, but this was the first time they had been combined in this way, and the first time the TaRL methodology had been used with children in the first two years of primary school.

In the words of a teacher: “... the methods allow children to talk and tell stories, even in their local language and this enlivens the class. The atmosphere in the classroom is great. This encourages the children to participate actively and motivates everyone.”

Key findings:

Intervention schools showed more protective school environments and higher levels of pupil wellbeing at school.
Teachers in intervention schools were significantly less likely to use violence to discipline children.
Children in intervention schools made significantly more progress in both reading and maths, than children in control schools.
The use of the TaRL methodology improved learning in both the older and younger groups within the intervention schools.

This research confirms the importance of investing, not just in access to schools but also in the quality of the education provided. Read the full report here.

Innovative teaching methods in bridging classes get children back to school

Bridging classes are a type of accelerated education programme to help out-of-school children catch up on missed learning and get back into the classroom. Between 2019 and 2022, ICI interviewed more than 800 children in 22 communities in Côte d’Ivoire before and after they attended bridging classes that were using the Teaching at the Right Level methodology, which helps children learn at their own pace.

The study found that the classes were effective in getting children back into mainstream school, that children scored high grades, and child labour decreased.

Key findings:

Almost 100% of children re-joined mainstream school after the classes, with 72% still attending school more than a year after the classes had ended. The most common reasons for not staying in school were: not liking school, no school meals, parents moving away, or families being unable to afford school supplies or fees.
91% of the children scored average grades or above, compared to 14% of children attending bridging classes without the innovative teaching methods.
Prevalence of child labour more than halved. Before starting the bridging classes, 63% of children were in child labour, compared to 23% after the classes had ended.

This study confirms the benefits of using TaRL methods in Bridging classes. Read the full report here.

The protective effect of education

In 2022, ICI published a new report exploring how work and school interact, by examining the links between child labour, school attendance and child wellbeing. The analysis draws on data collected from over 2,000 children from cocoa-growing households in Côte d’Ivoire.

The observational study shows that children in child labour, those working longer hours and those not in school had lower levels of child wellbeing, while children in school had consistently higher wellbeing scores. The results highlight the protective effect that education can have on children’s wellbeing, as among children in child labour, children who regularly attended school had consistently higher wellbeing scores than those who did not. However, the more hours a child worked, the weaker the protective effect of school and the lower their overall wellbeing. The findings also underline the importance of taking into account all work done by a child and not just that performed in agriculture, as the more hours worked the lower the child’s wellbeing.

The results underline the importance of education in cocoa-growing communities. A fundamental child right in itself, education is also as a means of protecting children from harm to their development caused by child labour, as well as by other forms of abuse and neglect. Read the full report here.

A key part of ICI’s work is to test out new approaches in an effort to find the most impactful, effective and efficient ways to tackle child labour and forced labour in cocoa. In 2022, we continued our work on innovative approaches through pilots focusing on the creation of Child Friendly Spaces, the use of Cash Transfers in combination with Labour Vouchers, Landscape approaches, and ways to prevent and address forced labour.

Child friendly spaces

As part of a pilot project initiated in October 2021 in Côte d'Ivoire, the child friendly spaces continued to thrive in 2022. Located in Belleville, Téady and Biakou respectively, the centres aim to keep children away from dangerous work in the fields by providing a safe space dedicated to the development and well-being of the child, where children can play while learning different skills supervised by trained facilitators. In 2022, more than 500 children had registered to the centres, 400 of whom attended regularly.

Yao Kouakou Serge Maurice, 15 years old, explained that the creation of the centre in Belleville helped him make new friends in the community, “Before the opening of the centre, I did not know the other young people in the village. Today, that is no longer the case. At the centre, I have made friends. I get along well with them and we now greet each other when we see each other outside the centre."

A fact confirmed by Mr. Zokdoua Dohoun Narcisse, Village Chief in Biakou which also has a children’s centre. He affirmed, "with this centre, we notice a cohesion in the village." The centres also provide peace of mind for parents, who can get on with their daily work without worrying about their children. This is the case of Touré Fanta, wife of a cocoa farmer and mother of Awa Aba, a 12-year-old girl who attends the Children’s Centre in Téady. "Before the centre existed, the children used to just wander around the village. So, I preferred that they accompany me to the field. Today, they go to the centre and I go to the field undisturbed,” she explained.

Providing children aged between 5 and 18 years old with access to a variety of games, sporting equipment, musical equipment, books and playground equipment, the facilitators also aim to create a safe environment, where children are aware of their rights and responsibilities and where they can come for advice and support. A fact that has been appreciated by parents, many of whom noted that their children are now better able to express themselves and interact with each other.

“Before the opening of the centre, I did not know the other young people in the village. Today, that is no longer the case. At the centre, I have made friends. I get along well with them and we now greet each other when we see each other outside the centre."

Yao Kouakou Serge Maurice

Forced labour

In 2022, we continued to test out approaches to tackle forced labour, which although occurring at a very different scale to child labour, is recognised as a human rights risk in cocoa that must be tackled (for more information see What is forced labour in cocoa? box). While this is a very complex issue, and we will continue to test and learn, our experience so far shows the importance of:

Awareness raising: As forced labour isn’t always easy to see and it doesn’t always appear in the way people expect it to, awareness raising on what it looks like in cocoa, with concrete, cocoa-specific indicators is key, along with an improved understanding of labour rights.
Identifying and tackling risk factors: Concentrating resources on tackling known risk factors, in addition to strengthening grievance mechanisms, allows us to reach as many individuals as possible. For example, if a common risk factor is a lack of clarity on working conditions, promoting the use of contracts will bring benefits to many individuals, in addition to reducing risk and actual cases, of forced labour.
Referral and community-based grievance mechanisms: Our pilot in Ghana showed that community labour protection committees were appreciated by workers as a trusted source of support, helping workers to sign agreements with their employers, assisting workers with grievances or referring them to district level support. Following this success, new communities have requested to join the pilot and have set up their own committees.

Our work on forced labour will continue as we test out new approaches to tackle this complex issue. In particular, we will continue our work on our focus on forced child labour as many of our experiences to date have been linked to adult labour cases.

What is forced labour in cocoa?

Forced labour is defined as work that is done involuntarily and under the threat of penalty. In practice this means that indicators of both an absence of consent and the threat of penalty are required to make it a case of forced labour.
In cocoa, common indicators for:
- An absence of consent include workers doing tasks that were not specified at the time of recruitment, working for longer hours than was specified, or performing tasks for other employers.
- The menace of penalty include withholding a salary or retaining identification documents.
All stakeholders involved need to understand what forced labour looks like in cocoa today, and the rights and responsibilities of workers and employers.
For children, forced labour is understood as working because of a penalty (or the threat of one) from someone other than the parent. This could be a threat to the child or to the parent. At times children are forced to work because their parents themselves are in forced labour.

How cash transfers combined with labour vouchers have changed labour practices in Côte d'Ivoire

Child labour has multiple root causes such as household poverty, challenges accessing adult labour, and fragile livelihoods that mean unexpected changes to income can have a large impact on a household. In order to address these, and aiming to improve the resilience of cocoa-producing households and their ability to cope
with unexpected changes and events, ICI implemented a pilot project on cash transfers and labour vouchers.

Cocoa-producing households were provided with a one-off cash transfer of CFA 50,000 (approximately EUR 76), in addition to being offered double the amount if they used the money to engage the services of a Community Service Group (CSG) for agricultural labour. CSGs are groups composed of local individuals, often linked to a cooperative, who offer agricultural services which could otherwise be carried out by children, at an affordable rate with the aim of reducing child labour in the community.

"The CSG reduced the workload that was resting solely on our husbands’ shoulders. The CSG can clean more than a hectare a day. Thanks to their work, our children do little work now.” – Wife of cocoa farmer

Key findings:

The pilot led to an increased use of CSGs to perform agricultural labour, with more than 70% of beneficiaries spending at least some of the cash on agricultural labour. Of these, two thirds hired the local CSG. The increased use of CSGs also strengthened cohesion within the community and created positive dynamics amongst the youth.
The increased use of CSGs also led to a reduction in workload for cocoa-growing households, leading to the reduced need for children’s help with farm work.
In two of the communities participating, an ICI-implemented CLMRS was in place allowing for the calculation of the pilot’s impact on child labour. According to the results, 66% children found in child labour in the families receiving the support, had stopped engaging in child labour after one follow up visit. These results are from a small sample of children, but they indicate that the cash transfer plus CSG subsidy has been highly effective in stopping children’s engagement in hazardous child labour.
The intervention also led to an increase in families’ food security, with some community members reporting that the productivity of both cash and food crop plantations increased as a combined result of the mobilisation of additional labour and additional funds available for agricultural inputs.

The results of the pilot found that unconditional cash transfers, with an incentive to spend the money on hiring Community Service Groups for cocoa farm work, helps boost the use of paid adult labour, which can replace children doing hazardous work on family farms. ICI will publish the full findings of this study in 2023.

Landscape and Referral pilot

In 2022, ICI launched the Landscape and Referral project in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, an innovative project in line with its 2021-2026 strategy, designed to reinforce collaboration between all stakeholders to achieve a common goal.

The main objective of this new approach is to strengthen functional cooperation between actors from industry, civil society and government, in order to tackle child labor and improve child protection in cocoa-producing communities. This will enable faster, more effective and more efficient interventions, with better results for the communities concerned.

An important part of the project is mapping the child protection services that already exist in both countries. In Côte d'Ivoire, an interactive electronic map was produced, showing child protection services offered by public authorities, international and local organizations, in 21 regions of the cocoa zone, with priority given to the Haut-Sassandra region where the project was launched. In Ghana, the pilot project was launched in the districts of Asunafo North, Assin South, North and Central, where a similar mapping exercise was carried out with the active participation of the government.

During a workshop held as part of the project in October in Haut Sassandra, Côte d’Ivoire, with the Ministry of Women, Families and Children (MFFE), organised to highlight how to better identify and refer children, the Director of Child Protection at the MFFE Diarra Mariam, advocated for the importance of collaboration and joint synergies between stakeholders.

"Often in the fight against child labour, the actors involved work in isolation. The mechanism we are discussing will be cited as a model, as good practice to improve the framework that has been put in place to effectively fight against child labour in cocoa farming” she said.

Driving sector-wide change by shaping best practice, standards, and policy to create an enabling environment.

This year ICI continued its work to create the necessary enabling environment to see real impact in the cocoa sector by engaging in the development of Sectoral Best Practice, Frameworks, and Standards; the development of Policy and Regulation; and the organisation of Capacity Building and Training, in addition to supporting all stakeholders to align their actions for a more coordinated approach.

Sectoral Best Practice, Frameworks, and Standards	Policy and Regulation	Capacity Building and Training
Participation in the Child Labour in Cocoa Coordination Group (CLCCG) The US Department of Labour-led CLCCG discussions aim to define a new framework to shape the work of all actors in tackling child labour in the future. Discussions will continue in 2023 with ICI taking on the role of Coordinating Technical Partner. Consultation on the update of the Fairtrade Cocoa Standard (Dec 2022) Fairtrade updated the requirements in the Cocoa Standard on human rights, traceability, and deforestation to which ICI provided input. Continued efforts to support the ongoing development of the African Regional Standard for Sustainable Cocoa (ARS 1000) In Côte d'Ivoire, ICI contributed to the development of training guides for use by technical agents and cocoa producers. In Ghana, ICI gave input to operational guidelines compiled by the Ghana Standards Authority. Development of a new OECD Handbook to help businesses in the cocoa sector perform due diligence ICI worked with the OECD with support from GIZ to produce the ‘Business Handbook on Due Diligence in the Cocoa Sector: Addressing Child Labour and Forced Labour’ (the Handbook will be published in 2023). Continued involvement in the ISCOs (National Sustainable Cocoa Platforms in Europe) including GISCO, FRISCO and SWISSCO Together with UNICEF, ICI co-chaired the ISCO Child Labour Working Group organised by SWISSCO. ICI, together with Mondelez, co-chaired the ISCO Monitoring Working Group organised by GISCO. ICI submitted its membership application to FRISCO, which is pending approval in spring 2023. ICI also advised the FRISCO on the creation of objectives on child labour.	Continued engagement on Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) legislation with the Cocoa Coalition Contributing to the Cocoa Coalition’s Joint Position Paper in response to the proposed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Proposal for amendments made by the Cocoa Coalition and shared with various Members of the European Parliament, Member States representatives (Council) and Commissioners (European Commission). Response to the Forced Labour Regulation proposal ICI submitted its response to the proposed EU Regulation on the Prohibition of Products made with Forced Labour as part of the public consultation process.	Support to national authorities in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana Building on an ongoing process of gap assessments, ICI delivered various capacity building initiatives including: Logistical support Training Systems integration (see more in Support to national authorities in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana).

Sectoral Best Practice, Frameworks, and Standards

Policy and Regulation

Capacity Building and Training

Participation in the Child Labour in Cocoa Coordination Group (CLCCG)

The US Department of Labour-led CLCCG discussions aim to define a new framework to shape the work of all actors in tackling child labour in the future. Discussions will continue in 2023 with ICI taking on the role of Coordinating Technical Partner.

Consultation on the update of the Fairtrade Cocoa Standard (Dec 2022)

Fairtrade updated the requirements in the Cocoa Standard on human rights, traceability, and deforestation to which ICI provided input.

Continued efforts to support the ongoing development of the African Regional Standard for Sustainable Cocoa (ARS 1000)

In Côte d'Ivoire, ICI contributed to the development of training guides for use by technical agents and cocoa producers.
In Ghana, ICI gave input to operational guidelines compiled by the Ghana Standards Authority.

Development of a new OECD Handbook to help businesses in the cocoa sector perform due diligence

ICI worked with the OECD with support from GIZ to produce the ‘Business Handbook on Due Diligence in the Cocoa Sector: Addressing Child Labour and Forced Labour’ (the Handbook will be published in 2023).

Continued involvement in the ISCOs (National Sustainable Cocoa Platforms in Europe) including GISCO, FRISCO and SWISSCO

Together with UNICEF, ICI co-chaired the ISCO Child Labour Working Group organised by SWISSCO.
ICI, together with Mondelez, co-chaired the ISCO Monitoring Working Group organised by GISCO.
ICI submitted its membership application to FRISCO, which is pending approval in spring 2023. ICI also advised the FRISCO on the creation of objectives on child labour.

Continued engagement on Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) legislation with the Cocoa Coalition

Contributing to the Cocoa Coalition’s Joint Position Paper in response to the proposed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.
Proposal for amendments made by the Cocoa Coalition and shared with various Members of the European Parliament, Member States representatives (Council) and Commissioners (European Commission).

Response to the Forced Labour
Regulation proposal

ICI submitted its response to the proposed EU Regulation on the Prohibition of Products made with Forced Labour as part of the public consultation process.

Support to national authorities in
Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana

Building on an ongoing process of gap assessments,
ICI delivered various capacity building initiatives including:
- Logistical support
- Training
- Systems integration

(see more in Support to national authorities in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana).

“ICI’s technical expertise in tackling child labour and forced labour, and its multistakeholder nature, makes it well placed to advise the development of policy and standards – helping to ensure they answer the needs of cocoa farmers and their families and create an enabling environment that is effective, inclusive and impactful. This is a key part of our strategy, and developments in 2022 highlight the centrality of this work.”

Mil Niepold, ICI Board Co-President (Civil Society - Independent expert)

Message from Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Euphrasie Aka

Providing relevant support to authorities in cocoa-producing countries to ensure an enabling environment, is a key part of ICI’s 2021–2026 strategy.
In 2022 we have continued our work with the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, with the aim of strengthening national systems to tackle child labour and forced labour, improving the way private and national systems work together, in addition to ensuring more consistency within ICI ‘s interventions in both countries. In my new role as Director for West and Central Africa, I am keen to continue and consolidate this support that has long been a commitment of ICI, in addition to exploring new partnerships with other cocoa-producing countries in the region such as Cameroon, Nigeria, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo.

Message from ICI Country Director, Ghana

In Ghana, work focused on ensuring that different national and private systems work more efficiently together.
For example, we supported the operationalisation of the Ghana Child Labour Monitoring System (GCLMS), in particular testing and improving how it integrates data from other CLMRS. In addition, ICI continued to work with COCOBOD on the development of Ghana’s national Cocoa Management System, in particular on the child labour component. This system is designed to support both physical and social traceability in the country’s cocoa sector. A mapping of child protection services and actors in cocoa districts was also made.

We helped the Child Labour Unit (within the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations) to strengthen its monitoring and evaluation capacity, in particular to help it to develop a way to measure the impact of the National Plan of Action 3, and improve interoperability between national and private child labour
monitoring systems and the social welfare integrated management system. Training activities on child labour and forced labour were also continued with staff from COCOBOD, the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice, the police, labour officers and social welfare officers.

Mike Arthur, ICI Country Director, Ghana

Message from ICI Country Director, Côte d'Ivoire

To support improved collaboration between systems, in Côte d’Ivoire, we worked with the Ministry of Employment and Social Protection's Direction of the Fight Against Child Labour (DLTE) to map and analyse the different public and private child labour monitoring systems, in order to propose a national operational mechanism for integrated data management.

We also supported the review of Form 4, the tool SOSTECI (Côte d’Ivoire’s national child labour monitoring system) uses to capture data from all actors involved in child labour activities, with plans next year to digitalise the mechanism. In addition, (as part of ICI’s wider Landscape & Referral pilot project to support functional collaboration) we developed an interactive map of governmental and non-governmental services available for the protection, prevention and remediation of child labour and forced labour.

Allatin Ernest Brou, ICI Country Director, Côte d’Ivoire

Several new members, in addition to new project contracts, contributed to a total revenue of nearly 14m CHF in 2022 (in comparison to 13.1m CHF in 2021 and 9.9m CHF in 2020). Approximately one third of this revenue is from member contributions that serve to implement the operational plan of our strategy, and two thirds represents restricted income relating to specific projects.

2022 financial statement

Revenue	CHF
Member contributions (Core funds)	4,508,725
Restricted income for use on specific projects (Project funds)	9,441,916
Total Revenue	13,950,641

Expenditure	CHF
Activities and operations supported by Core funds	4,361,849
Activities supported by Core funds	2,359,133
Operations supported by Core funds	2,002,716
Activities and operations supported by Project funds	9,452,238
Restricted programme activities	8,094,541
Indirect costs to support restricted programme activities	1,357,697
Total Expenditure	13,814,087

Results before non-operating income / Expense and use of reserves	136,555
Miscellaneous other income	-63,940
Net use of reserves	79,090
Excess of revenue over expenditure after net variation of capital	151,704

New members

“It is great to see ICI continue to expand its membership base, underlining and strengthening the organisation's ability to drive sectoral impact. We are proud of the work we do and our ability to provide meaningful, expert leadership on tackling child labour and forced labour in the cocoa sector. It is really positive to see more players from the sector who wish to contribute to the common good.”

Isabelle Adam, ICI Board Co-President (Corporate Relations, Touton)

ICI board members, contributing partners and other donors end 2022