26 Mar 2019

Fairtrade becomes a member of the International Cocoa Initiative

Fairtrade International, representing the world’s most recognized ethical label, has joined the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) as a Non-Profit Contributing Partner.

The partnership will allow the two organizations to learn from each other, improve their existing operating models, and reach more children and their families in cocoa communities in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana to achieve a shared goal of eliminating child labour and enabling child protection.

Fairtrade and ICI have already started working together to enhance the effectiveness of their respective efforts towards child labour reduction. Amongst other things, the two organizations will compare approaches and results on their respective Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS), exploring how they might be more easily embedded in supply chains and scaled-up across communities.

“We’re excited to be linking ICI’s child protection expertise with Fairtrade’s mission to improve farmer livelihoods and tackle farmer poverty” said Nick Weatherill, ICI’s Executive Director. “By tapping into Fairtrade’s extensive sustainability footprint across many farming communities and by bringing the perspective of Fairtrade’s farmers into the continuous improvement of our operational model, we’ll have more impact for more cocoa farmers and their families.”

“Ending child labour and enabling child protection is an urgent human rights issue, which Fairtrade International has been working on since 2010,” said Dario Soto Abril, CEO of Fairtrade International. “In addition to tackling a root cause of child labour by raising cocoa farmers’ incomes, we at Fairtrade look forward to this new step in the partnership with ICI, an organisation that provides expertise and brings multiple stakeholders together to collectively scale up good practices.”

ICI and Fairtrade will also seek to coordinate trainings and other programmes to deepen their collective impact in cocoa communities.

“We must continue to address child labour through a protection framework on multiple fronts,” said Dr. Nyagoy Nyong’o, Executive Director of the producer network Fairtrade Africa. “This means everything from ensuring a fair price for cocoa so that families can earn a decent living, to providing safe educational opportunities for children, to building awareness on children’s rights, including their right to protection. Working together, we will go further.”