Child Labour in Nest

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

Children younger than 15 continue to work at cocoa farms connected to Nestlé, more than a decade after the food company promised to end the use of child labour in its 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.

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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...