With the scale up of Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS) advancing, and calls from civil society to set clear definitions and reporting benchmarks, the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) carried out a review of these systems, commissioned by the Swiss Cocoa Platform.
ICI consulted various stakeholders from industry, civil society, governments, international organizations, and multi-stakeholder initiatives, to develop a common definition of CLMRS and set key indicators which implementers should report against.
The common definition states that a CLMRS must be able to successfully implement four core activities:
- Raise awareness on child labour and resulting harm amongst farmers, children and members of the wider community.
- Identify children in child labour through an active monitoring process, using standardized data collection tools.
- Provide both prevention and remediation support to children in child labour, and others at risk, and document the support provided.
- Follow-up with children identified in child labour to monitor their status on a regular basis until they have stopped engaging in child labour.
The key indicators include: the number of households and children monitored by a CLMRS; the number and percentage of children identified in child labour; whether children receive prevention and remediation support; and whether identified children stop working.
Throughout this collaborative process, ICI consulted the German, Dutch and Belgian Platforms for sustainable cocoa and their members, who have validated the findings and operational definition. View the presentation from the final workshop.
The review forms part of an ongoing process by national cocoa platforms to develop a harmonised results framework to monitor the progress of CLMRS.
