What is "certification"?
What child and adult labor issues exist on cocoa farms in West Africa?
Are steps being taken to address these issues? How are the lives of children and families on cocoa farms improving?
These are the questions that cocoa-farming certification seeks to answer in order to improve the lives of children and families on cocoa farms.
Cocoa certification is a transparent, credible, and ongoing program that reports on labor conditions in the West African cocoa farming sector – on a country-by-country basis. The cocoa certification program also measures the effectiveness of work to ensure that cocoa is grown responsibly without the worst forms of child labor or forced adult labor.
Cocoa certification represents a major step forward in efforts to improve the well-being of children, farm families and communities in the cocoa sector.
This 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)
Cocoa certification will include:
- 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 the impact of efforts to improve labor conditions
- Remediation – a range of activities designed to improve the well-being of children and address the issues brought to light by the survey
- Independent verification of the data collection, reporting, and efforts to improve labor conditions
These elements are designed to 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
