ABIDJAN (AFP) — US lawmakers will visit plantations in cocoa-rich Ivory Coast next week to evaluate its progress in establishing a certification system against child labour, a senior Ivorian official said Friday.
Senators Bernard Sanders and Thomas Harkin along with congressman Eliot Engel are expected in the West African nation, the world's largest cocoa-producer, January 7 to 9.
Their visit comes ahead of a July 2008 certification deadline to ensure cocoa heading to the United States -- the third largest importer of Ivorian cocoa -- has not been produced with child labour.
"We're going to show them concretely how the certification protocol is applied on the ground," said Amouan Acquah, head of SSTE, an Ivorian agency attached to the prime minister's office that tracks child labour.
She expressed optimism the lawmakers' visit would lead to US certification of Ivorian cocoa.
Harkin and Engel are the authors of a 2005 protocol established between the American government, the chocolate industry and cocoa-producing countries that obliges them to show child labour has not been used in any stage of production.
Non-governmental organisations have accused Ivory Coast of abusive use of children in the country's plantations.
One 2005 study said as many as 200,000 children worked in Ivorian plantations, with three-quarters of them handling pesticides. Still, the study noted most of the children worked for their families.
The fact most children were offspring of cocoa producers proved "this is not about slavery but about transmitting know-how," although possibly under adverse conditions, Acquah said.
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