The International Cocoa Initiative, a collaborative effort, between industry, labour unions, and civil society, was established in 2002 to help address the problem, with some of the world’s biggest chocolate makers publicly pledging to use only ethical cocoa in all of their products by 2020.
The Harkin-Engel Protocol (aka Cocoa Protocol), an international agreement aimed at ending the worst forms of child labor and forced labor in the production of cocoa, was also signed in 2001.
While this is encouraging, about 95 percent of chocolate sold worldwide is still not certified to be free of child, forced, or trafficked labour, says World Vision.
Most companies are also not yet consistently working with third-party certification organizations to monitor and verify that their cocoa is actually child-labour free, says Hotchkiss, something World Vision hopes to change.
“One serious issue within the industry is, how do you verify and monitor that the supply is ethical?” she says, adding that consumers can look for logos on the chocolate wrapper from organizations such as Fair Trade International, Rainforest Alliance, or UTZ, who measure whether the product is ethically made.
Finding Ethically Produced Chocolate
A new website and free app called ChocoFinder, developed by Toronto filmmaker Lalita Krishna, aims to help Canadians find chocolatiers that sell ethical products in their area.
World Vision also recently unveiled its Good Chocolate Guide, which lists ethical chocolate brands and products that can be found in many Canadian grocery or specialty stores.
