Certification is the final requirement of the Industry Protocol process and a critical part of the cocoa and chocolate industry's efforts to ensure that children are not harmed in cocoa farming.
Certification is a system of continuous monitoring, corrective action and regular reporting along with independent verification, with a goal of compliance with ILO Convention 182. The certification system will provide interested parties with an ongoing, credible evaluation of progress in efforts to ensure that children are not harmed in cocoa farming, and that cocoa is grown responsibly.
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Certification
Certification
Progress is being made towards the final milestone of the Industry Protocol, the development of standards of certification. Certification is a system of continuous monitoring, corrective action and regular reporting on labor practices and related issues in a country’s cocoa farming sector.
Child work on family farms is a traditional and normal activity in the cocoa growing sector, particularly at harvest time. However, enforced or unsafe child labor is unacceptable.
Certification will certify progress across an entire country - not by individual farms or cocoa shipments.
The cocoa certification program includes four key components:
- On-the-ground programs to ensure children are not harmed in cocoa farming and to address the welfare of children and their families
- Monitoring at the farm village level
- Corrective action to address issues identified via the monitoring program
- Independent, third-party verification of the results collected via the monitoring
More information is available on:
www.cocoaverification.org
