According to a report by the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) Foundation, child labor increased by almost 20% in Côte d’Ivoire between mid-March and mid-May, when schools closed. More generally, the phenomenon has been on the rise for ten years, according to NGOs, but the Ivorian government wants to show its progress in the fight against child labor.
as reported from Abidjan,
Police said they had rescued eleven children and two youths who were working illegally in cocoa plantations in the southwestern part of the country, where the youngest was ten years old. It was a joint operation carried out in the Sassandra department by the crews of San-Pedro and Soubré, which led to the arrest of three farmers accused of illegally getting children to work incocoa plantations.
“These children logically had to go to school. But they are out of school and they were caught in the act because they were in a cocoa plantation that crushed the pods and even picked the cocoa, ”explains Commissioner Luc Zaka, head of the police sub-directorate responsible for combating child trafficking. .
According to specialized NGOs, more than a million children are said to work on cocoa plantations in West Africa, a phenomenon exacerbated by peasant poverty. But Ivorian police say they want to distinguish between children who help parents in the field on weekends and those who work full-time and are victims of human trafficking.
“But we choose the days to perform the operations. The proof, the operation performed Tuesday. On Tuesday, we tell ourselves that it is a working day as school has resumed. And if the child is found in a plantation, it means that he does not go to school, ”explains Commissioner Luc Zaka.
As part of this fight, six specialized police departments were set up in Ivorian territory in March last year: “From the very borders, the fight must be fought. Therefore, the installation of the antennas indoors is really an effective element to combat this phenomenon. ”
.
