Our Action Plan

What Exactly is Child Labour?

Not all work done by children is classified as child labour. Children’s involvement in tasks that do not affect their health and personal development, or interfere with their schooling, is not prohibited. While children helping out can have positive benefits for them and their families, measures need to be taken to ensure this work is not hazardous and does not interfere with school.

Traditionally, children have always helped out on the family cocoa farm, much as they do in other countries or for other crops. However it is recognised that without effective awareness and education, children often work in hazardous conditions: spraying pesticides, applying fertilizers, sowing and harvesting crops. Support for eliminating these hazards needs to go hand-in-hand with respect for beneficial local customs in producing countries. For example, older children's participation is seen as an essential way for them to learn farming practices so that they might eventually take over responsibility for the farm as part of their own livelihood. Having the family help on the farm is not prohibited by law, but there are situations of children carrying out unsafe tasks, using dangerous tools, carrying loads that are too heavy, suffering injuries and missing out on schooling.

Some producers are also known to seek cheap labour by illegally using forced child or adult labour. When children are taken from their families, even with their consent or with their parents’ consent, and sent away from their homes, sometimes to another region or country, for the purpose of exploitation, this is known as trafficking and is illegal. Adult "forced or compulsory labour", as described by the ILO convention 29, refers to “all work or service, which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”, and is also illegal.