The International Labour Organization states that child labor violates basic human rights.
It has been proven that household poverty is closely associated with child labor (source: ILO (International Labour Organization)). By keeping children out of school, any chance of social mobility is made all the less likely. As most of the cocoa in West Africa is produced by smallholders, households must deal with the realities of rural poverty, as well as difficulties accessing quality education due to a lack of local infrastructure.
The International Labour Organization uses two standards, both of which have been adopted worldwide and provide the legal basis for the fight against child labor:
It is up to the international community to ensure that these standards are applied, by exercising due diligence in global supply chains. Cocoa bean producers are particularly badly impacted by the dangers of child labor. These are linked to difficulties attaining a decent standard of living for families in rural areas, and the lack of local education infrastructure.
If children have to go to school and parents can't afford it, children are forced to support their families and work becomes an unavoidable reality. In West Africa (and the world's two leading cocoa-producing countries, Ghana and Ivory Coast, in particular), the NGO International Cocoa Initiative estimates that 1.56 million children are forced to work alongside their families. Forced labor is less widespread but remains a real risk in these countries.
At Valrhona, we are aware of the need to do better and make every effort to combat child labor.
In 2017, Valrhona became a member of the NGO International Cocoa Initiative which works in Ghana and Ivory Coast.
This NGO strives to secure a better future for children in cocoa-producing communities. It has tested and rolled out solutions for Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS).
The priority is to apply these solutions to our West African supplies, which are the most at-risk.
Valrhona has been committed to programs that facilitate and improve access to education since 2014. Alongside our partners and local authorities, we have embarked on a vast program prioritizing the schools that need to be built or renovated based on their existing infrastructure, condition and capacity.
Since 2014, 14 schools have been built and renovated in Ivory Coast, Ghana, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela supporting a total of 65 cohorts and 2,555 students.
In parallel to these efforts, Valrhona has funded services such as school canteens, computer centers, libraries, washrooms and so on, all of which in turn have improved access, attendance and the quality of the education for producer communities’ children. For example, in Kouameblekro, Ivory Coast, afternoon attendance rates rose from 50% to 90% when a canteen was set up.
In 2023, we signed an agreement with our partners in Ivory Coast and Ghana to set up a Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System in each country based on the ICI’s method.
Through the testimony of Stéphane Sabourin, Valrhona cocoa sourcer, discover some of the actions taken by Valrhona to promote access to education.
At Valrhona, we are aware that minimum prices are not enough to guarantee a decent standard of living, and we are acting accordingly.
In Ivory Coast, over the last five years Valrhona has bought its cocoa at a price averaging 34% more than the minimum guaranteed by the state. Valrhona also gives producers a premium based on quality. In Ghana, in 2022, the premium per bag was increased by 40% to help producers cope with local inflation.
Valrhona relies on its long-term relationships with partners and producers as a means of supporting them in the fight against deforestation and global warming. We are committed to having no plots on protected land. By overlaying all our partner growers' plots onto each country’s official map, we can check that none are in a protected area.
At the same time, we are committed to reducing its carbon use across all emission scopes: we have a target of cutting our carbon emissions by 90% (compared with 2018) by 2050. So we have launched a program with the NGO Nitidæ to calculate our cocoa beans’ carbon footprint from the growing area itself. Since 2023, these field studies carried out and certified by the NGO have made it possible to survey, qualify and quantify the risk of deforestation over a 20-year period.
At Valrhona, we know that agroecology is a priority if we are to sustain cocoa-growing over the long term, so we have a responsibility to help our producers to adopt this practice.
Since 2015, we have been a founding member of the Cacao Forest project, a pioneering multi-sector initiative that aims to build a sustainable cocoa industry through agroforestry.
Between 2015 and 2022, several agroforestry models were tested in the Dominican Republic, and the most successful ones were identified and ready to be rolled out across the country. Since 2023, the Cacao Forest program has been developing a proposal for Ivory Coast.
Traceability underpins all our policies and ambitions and is a prerequisite for any environmentally and socially responsible business. It enables us to monitor, strengthen and orient our actions.
100% of Valrhona cocoa beans are traced from the producer. To go further, Valrhona is committed to extending its plot-based traceability so that we can gain even more visibility over production areas. By the end of 2023, 86% of our bean harvest had been geolocated and mapped.
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