Why It Matters:

Despite industry promises to the contrary, child labor in the cocoa producing industry has been steadily increasing. A recent US Department of Labor-funded study found that 1.56 million children are harvesting cocoa in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. This is two decades after the major cocoa companies promised to end their reliance on child labor in the 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol. Many children are trafficked from Mali and Burkina Faso to work under slavery-like conditions. Forced child labor routinely results in extreme bodily and mental harm, and in nearly every case, it cuts children off from schooling and health care, restricting their fundamental rights and threatening their futures. Moreover, United Nations officials estimated that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these issues, funnelling millions of children into the workforce, including ten-year-olds working on cocoa plantations in West Africa.

Poverty is a root cause of child labor. When workers are not paid a living wage, they struggle to afford child care, school, and are often forced to send their children to work in order to make a survivable income. Therefore, without a commitment to pay all workers a living wage, Mondelēz cannot effectively eliminate child labor from its supply chain.

This clear violation of human rights also adversely impacts a corporation's ESG ratings, thereby inhibiting investors, worsening their risk management, increasing their costs, reducing their revenues and lowering their share price. With blockchain and distributed ledger technology, companies now have a safe and transparent tool to effectively monitor and police their supply chains and there is no longer any financial excuse for forced child labor to be a part of any company's supply chain. Studies have documented that implementing a progressive child labor policy has an overall positive effect on revenue.