Skip to content

Living Income and Child Labour in the Cocoa Sector of Côte d’Ivoire

Authors
Rik Habraken, Oumou Diallo , Lisa de Graaf , Rob Kuijpers
Publication year
2023

KIT Working Paper

Child labour remains a persistent human rights violation in international commodity supply chains, adversely impacting children’s physical and mental health and depriving them of educational opportunities (UNICEF, 2020).

This holds true for the cocoa sector in Côte d’Ivoire; a country that produces 43% of all cocoa worldwide (ICCO, 2022). A nationwide study conducted by NORC (Sadhu, et al., 2020) showed that during the 2018/19 cocoagrowing season, 790,000 children were engaged in child labour in cocoa producing areas in Côte d’Ivoire. This represents 38% of children living in agricultural households. Of these children, an estimated 770,000 children (37% of children living in agricultural households) were exposed to hazardous work.

Related project

  • Towards more effective ways to address child labour in the cocoa sector

    • Institute
    • Project

    Child labour remains a persistent human rights violation in the cocoa sector, impacting children’s physical and mental health while depriving them of educational opportunities. The cocoa sector is increasingly responding to this issue by implementing innovative programmes, targeting the root causes of child labour, such as poverty and a lack of access to quality education. […]