Fairtrade ANZ response to Sunday broadcast of "Chocolate - The Bitter Truth"

The screening by Sunday of the edited version of the BBC Panorama programme “Chocolate: The Bitter Truth” raised within it a series of questions about whether Fairtrade organisations had systems and structures in place to identify and prevent children working from on West African cocoa farms that supply major chocolate manufacturers.

The programme clearly stated: “Fairtrade can only take action because its farms are traceable and open to scrutiny. Most are not.”

This explicit validation of Fairtrade’s audit systems should not detract from the central point of the programme’s findings - that is the continued serious problem of child labour and child trafficking in West Africa’s cocoa industry.

The Fairtrade movement has already redoubled its efforts to eradicate child labourin the world’s most poverty stricken regions which is caused by deep-seated poverty exacerbated by unjust terms of world trade, conflict, drought and extreme weather conditions triggering forced migration. This is the reality that those on cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and Ghana have to deal with on a daily basis.

The cocoa market continues to work against the interests of growers in West Africa and other cocoa producing regions providing an environment for child labour to flourish. Cocoa prices in real terms have slumped in the past 40 years from US$2.50 per lb in 1970 to less than US$0.80 per lb in 2008 according to Food & Agriculture Agency of the United Nations despite a recent speculative commodity price hike.

The journalist in the programme concluded: “I asked myself at the beginning of this journey: ‘Do we pay a fair price for our chocolate?’ ...Actually the answer lies here in the reality of the situation in West Africa and the cocoa farms here, and the grim reality of life where they don’t have shoes to wear, they don’t have electricity and running water. And all that begs another question – ‘Are we in the west prepared to pay a little bit more for our chocolate so that they can enjoy a decent standard of living and more importantly so they don’t have to use child labour?’”

Thanks to access to the international Fairtrade market, over 50,000 poor farmers and workers in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) have been able to improve their lives with tangible economic and social benefits including education.

Steve Knapp, Executive Director of Fairtrade Australia & New Zealand said “Poverty is always the underlying problem that causes unacceptable forms of child labour, by tackling poverty Fairtrade is part of the solution. We are pushing the chocolate industry to extend its involvement with Fairtrade - to pay fair and stable prices to farmers and to work directly with them to tackle the huge challenges farmers and their communities face. We can’t guarantee there won’t be problems along the way but we can guarantee that by working to Fairtrade standards cocoa farmers will increase the income of their communities and that together we will tackle these problems where and when we find them.”

Fairtrade and FLO-CERT (independent auditors of the Fairtrade Certification system) are currently investigating allegations made in the programme regarding Kavokiva, a Fairtrade Co-operative from Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). Any allegations regarding child labour are taken very seriously and appropriate action will be taken to rectify any breach of Fairtrade standards. The safety and well-being of any children involved is Fairtrade’s absolute priority.

Whilst auditing can help identify and uncover cases of child labour, auditors cannot be on every small farm every minute of every day of every year. Instead, Fairtrade believes we must support local communities to help them tackle child labour themselves. Through Fairtrade, farmers groups are able to earn an additional Premium of US$150/tonne that they can use to improve their business and build community programs, from awareness-raising on issues of child labour to helping increase the availability and quality of local schooling. Paying farmers a fairer price for their cocoa is crucial for moving away from a reliance on child labour in the long-term.

Child labour is understood in the Fairtrade system not only as a problem faced by individual children and their families, but also as a problem perpetuated by poverty and unfair terms of trade. That’s why the focus of Fairtrade is to strengthen the position of farmers and workers in international supply chains, help them to become organised within their communities as well as to earn a better deal from the sale of their produce. 

Click here to find out what Harriet Lamb, Executive Director; Fairtrade Foundation had to say about the Panorama programme.

Fairtrade Australia and New Zealand hopes the programme will be seen as a call to action to chocolate companies, cocoa traders, international agencies, national governments, non-governmental organisations, consumers and those within the Fairtrade movement - into working harder and more constructively to tackle poverty and end child labour.