Step 3 is about adopting risk management and mitigation measures and implementing a strategy to address risks and impacts. This chapter illustrates how companies can design a fit-for-purpose strategy to prevent and address child labour and forced labour risks and impacts in the cocoa supply chain.
Business Handbook on Due Diligence in the Cocoa Sector
Addressing Child Labour and Forced Labour
Step 3: Cease, prevent and mitigate child labour and forced labour impacts
Abstract
Strategic questions for enterprises to ask
Is responsibility for addressing child labour and forced labour risks and adverse impacts assigned to a senior level focal point in your company?
Do you have a process to mitigate risk and impacts in the upstream part of the supply chain, including with suppliers with whom your company has no contractual relationship?
Does your risk management plan contain key performance indicators (KPIs) and timelines to measure success in responding to child labour, forced labour and other human rights risks and adverse impacts that have been identified and assessed?
How does your company collaborate with others when seeking to mitigate or address the identified adverse impacts, especially if your company is not operationally present in the sourcing country?
Has your company allocated suitable internal resources to enable effective responses to address human rights risks and impacts?
Cease, prevent and mitigate adverse impacts
Design and implement a strategy to respond to adverse risks and impacts
Step 3 of due diligence calls for action to address (cease, prevent and mitigate) the identified potential or actual adverse human rights impacts. The actions that a company takes to respond to these risks and impacts depends on whether it has caused, contributed to, or is directly linked to an adverse impact (for more information on this relationship please see Table 1). All companies regardless of their relationship to child labour and forced labour impacts are encouraged to collaborate with governments, NGOs, international organisations and multi-stakeholder initiatives among others in addressing the systemic drivers of child labour and forced labour in supply chains.
General principles companies should consider when responding to child labour or forced labour in their operations or supply chains
Always act in the best interests of the child. Effective company actions with regards to child labour and forced labour will seek the betterment of the child and prevent the child from being pushed into a situation where the child is further penalised. When a child has been identified in or at risk of child labour, manage the case and discuss possible solutions with the child and child’s family in partnership with relevant community, supply chain and national structures.
Develop safeguarding protections. Safeguarding includes a company commitment and plan to keep children safe. At its most basic, safeguarding entails the prevention of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and maltreatment by employees and other persons whom the company is responsible for.
Disengage responsibly. Where there are repeated failed attempts to influence and engage an entity in ceasing actions that cause or contribute to child labour or forced labour, companies should consider disengagement. Disengagement should be conducted in a responsible time bound way, ensuring in the first instance that children and their families are supported.
What steps should companies that are causing or contributing to child labour or forced labour take?
In these cases, the first step is to stop the activities that are causing or contributing to child labour or forced labour, before working to prevent and mitigate future adverse impacts. For example, if a company is contributing to child labour or forced labour through its purchasing practices, stopping these activities may mean working with business teams to institute longer-horizon purchasing agreements that provide predictability for co‑operatives and farming families. In general, working to prevent and mitigate future child labour or forced labour impacts may include reinforcing policies; building capacity of due diligence systems of suppliers and business partners; establishing or strengthening preventative and mitigation measures such as through CLMRS; ensuring regular training of staff (including field staff, buyers and extension agents that are promoting crop production in addition to those responsible for labour monitoring) and verifying suppliers’ due diligence systems.
Specific examples of steps that can be taken in the case of child labour and forced labour can be found below, and practical examples of measures to prevent and mitigate adverse impacts can be found in the section “Adopt risk prevention and mitigation mechanisms”.
Child labour:
When potential or actual cases of child labour have been identified as being caused, or contributed to, by the company, tailored support should be provided. This could for example be a referral to the appropriate local child protection authority or community-based organisation. For companies to know how to prioritise which children should receive support, a decision-tree methodology with specific time bound actions, such as that developed by ICI can be applied to guide decision-making (see Figure 8).
Companies should discuss possible solutions with the child and their family, in partnership with relevant community structures, authorities and law enforcement services (when necessary). Companies without a system in place are encouraged to develop one by forming partnerships with civil society, government social workers or community child protection structures. Child protection systems should build on government standard operational procedures (SOPs). For example, in Ghana there are Inter-Sectoral SOPs for Child Protection and Family Welfare.1
For children above the minimum legal working age according to national laws and who have finished compulsory schooling, companies can consider engaging them in safe work. This includes but is not limited to non-hazardous positions suitable for young workers, ensuring hazardous positions are off-limits to young workers or rendering them non-hazardous. This may be a practical approach for working age children who are under 18 years of age.
Forced labour:
Forced labour requires an immediate response from companies. Due to its severe nature, cases of forced labour must be reported to the authorities.
Law enforcement, local authorities and protection agencies may be able to help identify the individual needs of the victim(s), and services needed. Referrals should be based on a strong understanding of the national mechanisms and pathways for remediation available in a country. Where victim services are not available through public officials, companies may consider engaging a qualified service provider to undertake remediation of forced labour situations.
When a situation of forced labour is identified, first ensure the immediate safety of the child/victim. This includes putting appropriate child/victim safeguarding protections in place. At its most basic, safeguarding entails the prevention of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and maltreatment by employees and other persons whom the company is responsible for.
Companies can discuss possible solutions with the victim (e.g. paying back owed wages, services to find alternative employment), in partnership with relevant community structures, authorities and law enforcement services, when necessary.
What steps should companies that are directly linked to child labour or forced labour through a business relationship take?
For companies that are directly linked to child labour or forced labour through a business relationship, it is important to influence the business partner that is causing or contributing to child and forced labour to take measures to end these adverse impacts. For example, companies can work with business partners to ensure that children are removed from child labour and a time‑bound plan is put in place to help the child access education, rehabilitation, social integration and/or collaborate inactions to support the needs of their family.
Build leverage to influence through consultation with the victim, relevant community, supply-chain and national structures.
Participate in industry or multi-stakeholder initiatives to increase leverage if entities are taking insufficient action.
Work with the business partner causing child labour and forced labour impacts to provide remedy to victims (see the following sections Remedy: Provide for or co‑operate in remediation when appropriate and Reaching scale and impact to address child labour and forced labour through collaboration).
Consider discontinuing engagement with business partners if nothing is done (over a given period) to address these impacts and prevent future incidences from occurring. If engagement efforts fail to result in changes within a time bound period, companies should responsibly disengage from doing business with these business partners.
How can companies use leverage to influence the behaviour of companies causing or contributing to child labour or forced labour?
Leverage exists “where the enterprise has the ability to effect change in the wrongful practices of the entity that causes the harm” (OECD, 2011[32]). Enterprises often have more leverage than they realise.
This can include, for example (ILO/IOE, 2015[5]):
Traditional commercial leverage: Include expectations around preventing and addressing child labour, forced labour and respect for human rights in commercial contracts
Broader business leverage: Support upstream supply partners through capacity building, awareness raising, and sharing tools and resources such as this Handbook
Leverage together with business peers: Create collective action with other companies sourcing from the same area at risk for child labour and/or forced labour. This may include companies outside the agriculture or cocoa sector
Leverage through bilateral engagement: Engage one‑on-one with one or more other actors, such as governments, business peers, trade unions, international organisations or civil society organisations
Leverage through industry/multi-stakeholder collaboration: Collaborate with governments, business peers, trade unions, international organisations, civil society organisations and/or multi-stakeholder initiatives.
If leverage and influence fail to result in an improvement on addressing child labour and forced labour, ending the business relationship may be appropriate. In cases of disengagement, care should be taken that children, farmers and workers are not pushed into worse situations. Companies should avoid placing the burden of compliance on business entities in the supply chain with the least capacity and should rather support investment in systems and support measures for these businesses to change behaviour.
Figure 8. How to prioritise which children receive support in a cocoa farming community?
Source: ICI (2022[33]), Decision tree: Selecting support to prevent and remediate child labour through a CLMRS, https://www.cocoainitiative.org/knowledge-hub/resources/selecting-support-prevent-and-remediate-child-labour-through-clmrs.
Adopt risk prevention and mitigation measures
In addition to stopping activities if a company is causing or contributing to child labour or forced labour or influencing the actions of business partners who are causing or contributing to child labour and forced labour, companies should also adopt a plan that is fit for purpose to prevent and mitigate potential future adverse impacts related to child labour and forced labour.
“Prevention” refers to activities that are intended to avoid an adverse impact occurring in the first place (e.g. which reduce the risk of an adverse impact occurring); whereas “mitigation” refers to activities that reduce the impact when an adverse impact does occur. Prevention is the primary goal of due diligence (OECD, 2018[3]).
A risk prevention and mitigation plan should:
Engage key stakeholders (e.g. children and their families, suppliers, farmers, government stakeholders, CSOs, child labour experts, migration experts, human trafficking experts) in the development of the plan, in view of finding consensus on actions.
Integrate insights from cocoa growing communities, ensuring both men and women are represented, including parents, community and religious leaders, co‑operative staff, worker representatives (including migrant workers), teachers, local organisations such as child protection networks or women committees, and local government authorities that are responsible for child protection, welfare, and education. National Action Plans on child labour and forced labour from producing countries can also be good sources of information.
The plan should also specify targets and timelines, as noted in Table 5.
Table 5. Elements to include in a risk prevention and mitigation plan
Examples of measures that can be taken to prevent and/or mitigate child labour and forced labour risks and impacts
Improve access to quality education by:
Supporting communities to create a good school environment for children by constructing or renovating educational facilities, helping to increase both enrolment and attendance.
Running bridging classes to enable out-of-school children to catch up on missed classes,
Facilitating access to birth certificates which are necessary for children to attend school in some countries.
Support farmer livelihoods: Poverty and reliance upon cocoa as a single crop are two factors that can place children at higher risk of child labour. Companies can support farmers to diversify their income, which in return can help reduce the vulnerability of farming families to income shocks that can, in some cases, increase the risk for children to work or encourage incidence of forced labour.
Promote women’s empowerment: Adult literacy classes, small business or income‑generating activities, and Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) can help address power imbalances between men and women, empowering women which can result in better child protection
Establish an effective monitoring and remediation system. An effective Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS) can guide companies in providing support to children in child labour, and others at risk and help strengthen company preventative and mitigation measures (see Box 4 for more information on CLMRS).
Provide staff training. Ensure ongoing and refresher training for all staff to ensure violations of child labour and forced labour are prevented. Training should include field staff, buyers and extension agents that are promoting crop production in addition to those responsible for labour monitoring.
Consider a landscape approach. Landscape approaches, which involve all relevant parties in a geographic area, can help by pooling efforts to address child labour and forced labour across stakeholder groups. Some examples of outcomes from landscape approaches are improved access to birth registrations, better living conditions in cocoa growing communities through better access to education and health services, the construction of roads/infrastructure and the establishment of local child protection committees.
Box 6. Considerations for SMEs
Designate a person in your company to lead your human rights strategy and ensure they have the right training to understand the issues and resources, knowledge and support to implement it, in particular when it comes to child labour and forced labour.
Consult local employer associations, industry networks, international organisations and multi-stakeholder initiatives to learn how peers and other SMEs are addressing child labour and forced labour risks and impacts in the cocoa sector.
Include measures to address child labour and forced labour as part of performance reviews and incentives for staff.
Ensure that your expectations to address both actual and potential adverse impacts of child labour and forced labour identified are included in sales terms, procurement and contracting agreements and practices.
Share action plans with all your suppliers and ask them to share with sub-suppliers. Enhance co‑operation with suppliers identified as being at higher risk for child labour and forced labour.
In addition, upstream SMEs can:
Design a strategy based on the questions asked by buyers and key affected stakeholders.
Work with producers, smallholder farmers or other stakeholders in the supply chain, and communicate that strategy downstream.
Source: Adapted from Shift, IEO (2019[34]), SMEs and the Responsibility to Respect Human Rights, https://shiftproject.org/resource/smes-and-the-responsibility-to-respect-human-rights/.