3071-The political economy of new slavery

Amanda Berlan 169
as ‘you never know when you might need them’. The average Ghanaian
child – particularly one raised in a village – bears little resemblance
to the dream child of Western development campaigns, who is a freethinking,
highly opinionated agent, fully engaging in the freedom from
child labour by practising his or her right to play and socialize. In this
cultural context the rights-based approach may be slow to gain popular
acceptance. Child rights organizations will only find a sympathetic
audience to their cause if their agenda is carefully formulated to balance
local beliefs with global concerns. For example, asserting a child’s right
to play over his or her duty to contribute to the household income may
be less fruitful than sensitizing people to the way in which child labour
interferes with education (which will be expanded on in the later part
of this chapter), or to the growing problem of the commercial exploitation
of children.
The Ghanaian culture of reciprocity and work, and the concern for
family cohesiveness lend support to child work in the family context.
Broadly speaking, cocoa producers justify the presence of their children
on cocoa farms in such terms. Children need to participate in household
affairs to gain maturity and become responsible; it is also necessary
for them to work hard and help their parents. However, within this
perspective the children’s actual role may vary immensely between
different farms and different areas. As illustrated above, factors affecting
the degree of their involvement include whether there is a satisfactory
school nearby, or poverty levels. Other variations include the age of
the child or even the time of year, as some seasons are more labour
intensive than others. I gained further insight into the farmers’ attitudes
towards child labour following the Kuapa Kokoo AGM held in July 2002.
The co-operative Kuapa Kokoo, which supplies the cocoa for Fair Trade
chocolate, frequently addresses the farmers on the problem of child
labour and it was raised once more during the course of this meeting.
One group of farmers discussed the issue further when they returned to
the village. Their overall feeling was that child exploitation is a bad
thing and they would therefore not employ children to work on their
farms on the same terms as adult labourers. Yet most of their children
attended school and they saw it as fitting and appropriate to involve
their children in farm work when they were not in school. This attitude
is reinforced by the lack of realistic alternatives to child work in rural
areas. Indeed it is hard to argue against child labour when the alternative
is inactivity and boredom. In this respect, child work on cocoa
farms in Ghana must be understood as an alternative to doing nothing
rather than an alternative to going to school or taking part in any other