What Is Certification?

What child and adult labor issues exist on cocoa farms in West Africa?

Are steps being taken to address these issues? What needs to be done to improve the lives of children and adults on cocoa farms?

These are the questions that certification for cocoa farming seeks to answer.

Certification for cocoa farming is a transparent, credible, and ongoing process that reports on labor conditions in the West African cocoa farming sector – on a country-by-country basis.

Cocoa certification represents a major step forward in efforts to improve the well-being of children, farm families and communities in the cocoa sector. It is the first program ever to address labor issues involving a farm-based commodity grown on several million small family-owned and -operated farms in some of the world’s most remote regions.

(To learn more about the unique challenges of cocoa farming certification, click here)

Certification for cocoa farming includes:

• Data collection at the community and farm level that provides a statistically representative view of child labor and forced adult labor problems
• Transparent, publicly available annual reporting on the findings from the data collection, and on what must be done to address the issues raised in the report
• Remediation – a range of programs to improve the well-being of children and address the issues identified in the data collection process
• Independent verification of the certification process

These elements work together to drive continuous improvement in the well-being of children, families and cocoa farming communities.

To learn more about the individual components of certification, click on any of the boxes in the illustration below.