284,000 child workers on Africa cocoa farms

WASHINGTON, July 26 (Reuters) -- Some 284,000 child laborers work in hazardous conditions on the cocoa farms of western Africa and up to 2,500 of them may have been "trafficked" into the work, officials said on Friday.

Their figures were based on one of the first comprehensive studies of child labor on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana. The study was one of the steps agreed last year by labor watchdogs, foodmakers, millers and consumer groups to end abusive child labor practices by 2005 at the latest.

Some estimates have put the number of child slaves at 15,000, prompting proposals to bar U.S. imports of cocoa unless shippers can prove it was grown without slave labor.

Cocoa is the primary ingredient in making chocolate. Two-thirds of all cocoa products are consumed in Europe and North America. Ivory Coast grows more than 40 percent of the world's cocoa and neighboring Ghana is No. 2 with 15 percent.

Researchers conducted a set of surveys, including interviews of more than 4,800 farmers, child and adult workers, and community leaders, in arriving at the figure of 284,000 children -- 200,000 of them in Ivory Coast -- toiling in hazardous conditions. They clear undergrowth with machetes or spray pesticides without protective equipment.

"There also was evidence that up to 2,500 child workers may have been trafficked for cocoa work in Ivory Coast and Nigeria," according to a press release issued by the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID supported the study.

"Clearly, poverty is the underlying cause for the child labor situation in West Africa," said Jim Gockowski, the researcher from the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture who supervised the work.

The Chocolate Manufacturers Association, a trade group for the U.S. chocolate industry, said the study "confirms the need to address the safety of children on cocoa farms and the economic well-being of cocoa-farming families" as well as supporting the multi-step process to reform labor practices.

Many cocoa farms are small and rely on family labor to grow and harvest the cocao beans.

Tom Moorhead, deputy labor undersecretary, said the study would provide information for designing programs to end child labor.

"Most important is that the chocolate manufacturers and the West African governments have been working closely with us to eliminate exploitative child labor in the cocoa industry."

As part of that effort, an International Cocoa Initiative was launched on July 1 to support field projects and act as a clearinghouse for "best practices" to reform labor practices, to develop a plan to enforce standards against child and forced labor, and to help determine the best ways to monitor and report on compliance with those standards.

A summary of the report was not immediately available. Officials said it would be posted at three Web sites: http:/222.iita.org, http:/usaid.gov and http:/www.dol.gov/ilab.