Cote D Ivoire Case Study

Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa, is one of the world’s leading suppliers of cocoa, exporting about 43% of the cocoa beans. A third of the Ivorian economy is dependent on cocoa exports (Chanthavong, 2002), which means that any changes in the cocoa industry can result in huge impacts to Cote d’Ivoire’s country revenue. The market price of cocoa, however, is constantly fluctuating. Hence, farmers have unpredictable profits, which pressurises them to cut costs and use cheap labour, mainly through child and slave labour. As a result, an estimated 15,000 children in Cote d’Ivoire are forced to work on cocoa farms, under terrible conditions. These children are exposed to chemicals, long working hours, and denied a decent education. With low educational
Child labour is very prevalent in Cote d’Ivoire because many of these children suffer from poverty, as mentioned earlier. West African countries around and including Cote d’Ivoire face very high levels of poverty, from 40-72%. Families are unable to send their children to school as getting an education will delay them getting a job, which they need urgently. This pushes families to send their children to work, and some of them are lured and trafficked from their countries to Cote d’Ivoire.
Many organisations locally and internationally are striving to end child labour in Cote d’Ivoire. It is undeniable that there are numerous benefits to ending child labour, one of them being that education will be more accessible to the children. Currently, 59% of children in Cote d’Ivoire are working, and only 67% are in school. 40% of the children who work in cocoa fields do not attend school (Global March, 2015). Working on cocoa farms could be a huge contributing factor to the children not going to school. When children spend their time in working instead of schooling, the opportunity cost will be that they cannot go to school. Even for those that do attend, some are too tired from working to concentrate in their classes. Though it may be seen, in
Millions of children work long hours in dangerous conditions. For children working on Cote d’Ivoire’s cocoa farms, they typically start work at six in the morning and end in the evening. Some have to use chainsaws to clear forests, others climb cocoa trees and use machetes to cut bean pods (Food Empowerment Project, 2014). This leads to frequent injuries, and many children bear scars of their machete injuries on various parts of their bodies. If they were unable to meet expectations, they would be abused. These work and hard labour certainly pose a danger to these child labourers who are neither professionally trained in nor have the physical strength to handle these aspects. When injured, they often either receive inadequate treatment, or none at all. Working on cocoa farms also cause them to be exposed to toxic pesticides or fertilisers. This is extremely unsafe for all the cocoa farm workers, as they do not have any protective clothing to keep them safe. Children engaged in child labour also may have severe psychological harm, impacting their social development. For example, studies show that children working over 20 hours a week are more likely to break the law later in life. In 2011, the life expectancy of Cote d’Ivoire’s population at birth was 50.7 (Humanium, 2011). Compared to the average life expectancy at birth of the global population in 2015, 71.4 (World Health Organisation,