Operational Support

We support our members, partners and the wider cocoa sector to adopt practices and systems that have a real impact on the ground for children, families and workers.

Effective strategies exist to prevent and address child labour and forced labour. A core part of our work is supporting the cocoa sector to adopt and scale up effective practices that are proven to protect and promote the rights of children and adults. We directly implement programmes to tackle child labour and forced labour, together with our members and partners. We also support actors across the cocoa sector to put in place effective practices themselves, by providing advice, tools and training.

Implementing on the ground

We put in place programmes to prevent, mitigate and address child labour and forced labour in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Cameroon, the three major cocoa producing countries in West Africa.

We provide time-bound support to our members and partners to develop and set up Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS) and Community Development approaches. Our staff work with cocoa communities, farming cooperatives and companies to deliver training; improve access to quality education; support livelihoods; strengthen community groups; empower women and more.

Strengthening child protection and reducing the risks of forced labour

We recognise that to reach all those children in need and have impact at scale, the engagement and action of the entire cocoa sector is needed.

That’s why we support our members and partners to set up and enhance their own systems to assess risks, protect and promote the human rights of children and workers. Our technical and capacity-building support encompasses different activities, supporting companies’ efforts to identify, evaluate and address the risks of child labour, in line with Human Rights Due Diligence frameworks.

Strengthening capacity within the sector to tackle child labour and forced labour in the cocoa supply chain is an integral part of our 2021-2026 strategy. For more information, please see the Capacity and Systems Strengthening section of the ICI Strategy.

Our approaches

We work with the cocoa sector to implement, strengthen, and scale-up effective systems to identify, prevent, and address child labour and forced labour risk.

Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS)

Embedded in supply chains or communities, Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems identify, prevent and address cases of child labour in a way that conforms to established principles of human rights due diligence.

By working directly with farmers, their families and farming cooperatives, they enable support to be targeted where it is needed most and are effective in reducing child labour by up to 50% among identified children.

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Community Development Approaches

We also support communities to identify their own needs and priorities. Once defined, holistic strategies are developed to identify, prevent and address child labour and improve access to quality education and other essential services.

We accompany and empower cocoa-growing communities, and support them on a journey to improve child protection. These approaches have proven to be effective in reducing community prevalence of child labour by almost 20% over three years.

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Operational Support

We support our members, partners and the wider cocoa sector to adopt practices and systems that have a real impact on the ground for children, families and workers.

Innovation and Learning

We conduct research, and we develop, test, evaluate, and share new innovations to advance the scale up of action against child and forced labour in the cocoa supply chain.

Policies, Practices and Standards

We work to achieve strong national and international policies and standards to ensure a supportive enabling environment for the cocoa sector, where impact at scale is prioritised.