3071-The political economy of new slavery

Amanda Berlan 163
farms in Ghana, the blank position held by many advocates of social
justice that children work because big corporations exploit them and
world prices are low, is both untenable and damaging to the overall
cause. I am not arguing that chocolate manufacturers can be exonerated
from trying to improve labour standards on cocoa farms because of the
structure of the cocoa industry in Ghana. Instead, I am arguing that
pressure on big multinationals to adopt the notion of CSR must be
tailored to individual cases in order to produce optimal social benefits
for producers, and this requires an in-depth knowledge and understanding
of the context in question. In the case of Ghana, chocolate
manufacturers have limited power to monitor labour standards on
every individual cocoa farm, and are constrained by market regulations
as to how far they can trade directly with producers. This does not
render the concept of CSR useless in this context, but means that investment
in the producer communities will have to go through particular
channels and the Fair Trade organizations have shown this is entirely
possible.
Child labour and child trafficking on cocoa farms
in Ghana
Levels of child participation in activities on cocoa farms in Ghana are
high. My personal estimate is that 95 per cent of children in farming
households work on their parents’ or their relatives’ farms, although
their involvement varies considerably in time and intensity. The terminology
used to describe their activities can be misleading as the use of
terms such as child labour or child work imply exploitation or greed and
in some contexts these are not predominant causal factors. The estimate
that 95 per cent of children of cocoa farmers work on the farms includes
children who are in full-time education and only carry out duties often
described as ‘light duties’, which are not exclusive to cocoa farming,
such as weeding or fetching water. Often their involvement is limited to
after-school hours, weekends and school holidays. Such involvement
does not fall within the scope of ILO Convention 182, which defines
the worst forms of child labour as comprising:
• forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale
and trafficking of children, debt-bondage, and serfdom and forced
compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;
• the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the
production of pornography or for pornographic performances;