Child labour on Nestlé farms:

chocolate giant's problems

continue
Auditors completing their annual report continue
to find evidence of child labour on Ivory Coast
farms supplying Nestlé

Meet Terry Collingsworth: the lawyer taking on

Nestle and ExxonMobil
Joe Sandler
Children Clarkethan 15 continue to work at cocoa farms connected to Nestlé, more
younger
than a decade after the food company promised to end the use of child labour in its
Wed 2 Sep 2015 14.34 BST
supply chain.

A new report by the Fair Labor Association (FLA), commissioned by Nestlé, saw
researchers visit 260 farms used by the company in Ivory Coast from September to
December 2014. The researchers found 56 workers under the age of 18, of which 27
were under 15.

At one farm in the Divo district of the country, the FLA found evidence of forced
labour, with a young worker not receiving any salary for a year’s work at a farm.

Ivory Coast is the world’s largest producer of cocoa, the raw ingredient that makes
chocolate. The industry is estimated to be worth close to £60 billion a year.

Researchers from the FLA, which was commissioned by Nestlé to investigate workers
rights on its west African farms in 2013 amid international pressure, found child
workers at 7% of the farms visited. Nestlé’s code of conduct prohibits the use of child
labour in its supply chain.

Though researchers found Nestlé had made substantial efforts to inform farmers
about its code of conduct, awareness of the code was low among farmers, with
farmers sometimes unable to attend training sessions due to either “lack of interest or
time”. The FLA also found that farms lacked any kind of age verification system for
workers to stop the use of child labour.

A total of 24 children were found working on farms as “family workers”, unable to

attend school, as they worked alongside their parents and siblings on plantations. On
farms employing children they were expected to work in hazardous conditions and
carry out dangerous tasks, including using machetes and transporting heavy loads.
Allegations of child labour and workers rights abuses have dogged Nestlé for years. In
2001 Nestlé signed the Harkin-Engel protocol, a voluntary agreement by members of
the cocoa industry and politicians to work towards ending the worst forms of child
labour.

But four years later, in 2005, noted human rights lawyer Terry Collingsworth filed a
lawsuit against the company and Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, alleging that the
companies gave substantial assistance to plantation owners who used forced child
labour.

In court documents, the three plaintiffs claim that they were trafficked from their
homes in neighbouring west African countries and put to work on plantations on
Ivory Coast. They describe how they were whipped, beaten and forced to work for 14
hours a day before retiring to dank, dark rooms without windows to rest. One
plaintiff, referred to in the case as John Doe II recounted how guards would slice open
the feet of any child worker who were caught trying to escape.

The case has been tied up in the appellate courts for years, and the companies have
recently stated their intention to take the child workers’ successful appeal in the
ninth circuit court of appeals to the US supreme court.

Commenting on the FLA’s findings, Collingsworth said the report challenged

corporate assurances that chocolate manufacturers were dealing with the problem of
child labour.

“This FLA report, and others before it, show that allowing the companies to act
‘voluntarily’ to clean up their problem has not, and will not, work. There are lots of
options that would work, including rigorous monitoring by an independent monitor
who has authority to take corrective action,” he said.

“Doing nothing more now will leave the child workers unprotected until the litigation
we have pursued is finally before a jury. We can’t say when that will be and should
not accept more delay in addressing a resolvable problem.”

The International Labour Organisation estimates there are as many as 59 million

African children, aged 5-17, involved in hazardous work today. Human rights
organisations like Human Rights Watch have written that Ivory Coast is yet to come to
terms with its history of civil conflict.

Nestlé has repeatedly stated its commitment to tackling child labour in its supply
chain, and has already taken action to address the issues raised in the FLA report.
These actions include increasing access to education, stepping up systems of age
verification at farms and increasing awareness of the company’s own code of
conduct.

A Nestlé spokesperson told the Guardian: “To date we have identified 3,933 children
working on their family farms (around 10% of the children surveyed) who were
involved in hazardous tasks classified as child labour. We have included half of them
in our Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation System, which includes providing
school kits, obtaining birth certificates and developing income generating activities
for the families of 312 identified children. Unfortunately, the scale and complexity of
the issue is such that no company sourcing cocoa from Ivory Coast can guarantee that
it has completely removed the risk of child labour from its supply chain.”

She added: “Where we have evidence that we’re making a difference, we will seek to
scale up efforts in these areas. We are already planning to scale up the Monitoring and
Remediation system to other producing countries, with a near-term priority being
Ghana. We’ll continue to work with the government and our partners to improve
standards across the industry.”

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Topics
• Working in development
• Nestlé
• Child labour
• Food & drink industry