Chocolate makers and exporters must fund a campaign to stamp out child labour on cocoa farms in top grower Ivory Coast, the campaign's co-ordinator says.
"We're waiting for support from the industry ... the ball is in their court," Youssouf N'Djore, national co-ordinator of Ivory Coast's Child Labour Monitoring System Project, told Reuters in an interview this week.
The West African nation and world's No 1 cocoa producer has been racked by instability since a brief 2002 civil war. It is also the target of allegations by international rights groups that children are working as slaves on its cocoa plantations.
The Ivorian government, cocoa sector and foreign multinationals who export and process Ivorian cocoa have all come under increasing scrutiny from rights and consumer groups who are campaigning for "Fair Trade" foodstuffs untainted by violence, child slavery or dangerous chemicals.
N'Djore said Ivory Coast had responded, with international help, by creating a pilot project, focusing on six villages in Oume district, 250 km (155 miles) north-west of Abidjan, to probe and tackle the problem of child labour in its cocoa fields.
The project report, published in December, showed that many Ivorian children, some as young as five, were being made to carry heavy loads in work in the cocoa fields. But there was less evidence they were involved in other dangerous tasks like using harmful pesticides or chemicals.
"We've done what we said we'd do," N'Djore said.
The government now needed $15 million to extend the project so that by July, 2008 half of the country's cocoa sector could be covered by the child labour certification process.
N'Djore said that while US and European food companies, who made millions of dollars each year out of their Ivorian business, had voiced support for the project and provided a consultant, they had yet to put up significant funds. "It's a question of will," he said. He said joint action to eradicate child labour by Ivory Coast and its foreign partners would create a "win-win" situation in which Ivorian origin cocoa products would command higher prices among consumers demanding ethical and fair trade certification.
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