Cocoa - Protecting Children Action Plan (PCAP)
This plan outlines Mars, Inc.’s approach to protecting children in our Responsible Cocoa
pillar and achieving our 2025 goals relating to addressing child and forced labor. Our
Protecting Children Action Plan (“PCAP”) will be advanced through robust human rights
due diligence processes and targeted community-based investments, both designed toaddress the root causes of child and forced labor in the cocoa supply chain.
We will periodically update our plan as we learn and adapt to dynamic conditions on the
ground and will report progress through our Cocoa for Generations annual report. The
plan will initially focus on Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire and we will take action in other sourcing
countries where relevant.
1. Introduction
We are committed to advancing respect for human rights in our value chain. This commitment is
specified in our Human Rights Policy, which is guided by the United Nations Guiding Principles on
Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). Addressing human rights risks, increasing income for farmers,
reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and promoting sustainable land use practices in the cocoa supply
chain are critical to meeting our Sustainable in a Generation (SiG) Plan ambitions for a Healthy Planet
and Thriving People.
The UNGPs outline an internationally agreed approach for governments and companies to identify,
prevent, and mitigate human rights issues. Mars has designed a framework called C.A.R.E.—which
stands for Commit, Assess, Respond, and Engage —designed to provide concrete steps for teams
across the business to take as they seek to apply the UNGPs.
2. Cocoa for Generations
We have worked in collaboration with industry peers, governments, non-governmental organizations(“NGOs”) and other industry stakeholders toward achieving sustainable cocoa production for
decades. However, progress has been slower than we had hoped, and our ambition for cocoa farming
families to thrive has not yet been realized. That’s why in 2018 we launched our Cocoa for Generations(“C4G”) strategy backed by an investment of $1 billion over 10 years (2018–2028). We aim to create aquicker pathway for cocoa farmers, their families and their communities to thrive. Our strategy has
two pillars: we aim to source Responsible Cocoa today, while developing new approaches for longterm Sustainable Cocoa. Our Responsible Cocoa pillar focuses on protecting children, preserving
forests, and improving farmer income across our cocoa supply chain.
Mars condemns the use of child and forced labor and is committed to working with governments,
suppliers, and farming communities to seek to prevent and remediate these issues in the cocoa supply
chain. Our primary action in this regard is working with our first-tier suppliers to build on existingcertification requirements to implement robust child and forced labor monitoring and remediation
systems (CLMRS) for households known to be at risk of child labor and forced labor. In this work, we
aim to put cocoa farmers and communities at the center of our efforts. In our PCAP, we use the terms“child labor” and “forced labor” as defined in the relevant International Labor Organization (ILO)
conventions1.
By 2025, we aim to have all cocoa we source produced by farmers in our Responsible Cocoa programs.
The cocoa will be physically traceable from the farmer to the first point of purchase (for details seeannex).
We are defining how we measure progress against each pillar of the C4G strategy that are consistent
with our Mars-wide Sustainable in a Generation Plan. The PCAP is complemented by our Cocoa andForests Approach to prevent deforestation throughout our cocoa supply chain.
Our progress toward achieving our goals will be reflected annually in our Cocoa for Generations
report; the most recent can be found here. We will share the challenges and lessons-learned throughour work for transparency and to support the growing body of knowledge on what is successful.
3. Understanding human rights impacts in cocoa sourcing
Root Causes. Cocoa is grown in developing countries facing multiple social challenges, including
extreme poverty, insufficient law enforcement, a lack of basic infrastructure (including clean water,roads, healthcare or schools), and poor access to knowledge, agronomic inputs, or finance options forfarmers. In addition, certain social norms may hamper the empowerment of women and communities,
and limit standards of living in cocoa growing households.
These root causes can contribute to adverse human rights impacts. Addressing the root causes in eachcocoa-sourcing country requires a holistic and collaborative approach within an enabling
environment. This is best done through strong partnerships, where roles and responsibilities are clear.
Mars is committed to collaborative efforts designed to advance respect for human rights.
Child labor. Child labor at the household level has been publicly documented in cocoa supply chainsin Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, where cocoa is mainly grown by smallholder farming households on small

1Mars’ work on child and forced labor is informed by the ILO Convention No. 138 on the minimum age for admission to employment andwork; Convention No. 182 on the worst forms of child labour; Convention No. 010 on the minimum age (agriculture); Convention No. 029
on forced labour.

plots of less than five hectares. The majority of farming households live under the World Bank extreme
poverty line, earning less than US$2,500 annually per household. 2 Farmers may depend on theirfamilies to work on the farm, as they cannot afford to pay laborers or to send their children to school,or because there is no accessible or safe schools in the vicinity of the family farm.
The 2015 Tulane child labor survey report3 indicated that more than two million children (~30% ofchildren aged 5-17 in cocoa growing areas) were estimated to be working in hazardous conditions in
the Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire cocoa sectors.4 Carrying heavy loads, spraying or handling agrochemicals
and using sharp tools such as machetes were the most common hazardous tasks found.
Forced labor. Forced labor has also been identified by expert researchers as a risk in the cocoa supply
chain. The Global Slavery Index 20185 estimates the prevalence of forced labor in the cocoa sector tobe 0.17% of children in Côte d’Ivoire and less than 2% in Ghana. They find that these figures are lessthan half a percent for adults working in the cocoa sector in both countries. Regardless of prevalence,
any findings of forced labor are of great concern. A 2019 Verité report assessing forced labor in Côte
d’Ivoire found that recently arrived migrant workers are most at risk,6 suggesting that the search foreconomic opportunities amongst migrant populations is an important driver of forced labor risk.
Solutions. While extreme poverty drives child and forced labor, each have additional unique drivers
requiring tailored solutions. For child labor, certification bodies tried a zero-tolerance approach andfound that it can be counter-productive, failing to address root causes and resulting in cases being
hidden.7 Instead, the sector began testing a continuous improvement model, where companies put
in place robust systems for identifying child labor risks, 8 activating preventive activities on asystematic basis, assisting families to understand the dangers of child labor, and playing a role in
remediating issues identified as appropriate.
Given the drivers of forced labor are quite different, additional approaches will be needed. Our
partner Verité has described the actions that governments, companies and civil society can take toaddress forced labor risks in the cocoa supply chain. These actions can be grouped under four
headings: (1) establishing robust systems to monitor, remediate, and prevent forced labor; (2)strengthening underlying supply chain infrastructure (including training and capacity building); (3)improving data collection and reporting of forced labor risk factors; and (4) facilitating accountability
and independent verification. We are working with Verité, the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) and

Bymolt, R., Laven, A., Tyszler, M. (2018). Demystifying the cocoa sector in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. The Royal Tropical Institute (KIT),
available at https://www.kit.nl/project/demystifying-cocoa-sector/
3
School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine Tulane University (2015), 2013/2014 Survey Research on Child Labor in West African Cocoa
Growing Areas, available at https://cocoainitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/tulane_university__survey_research_on_child_labor_in_the_cocoa_sector_-_30_july_2015.pdf
4
The prevalence of child labor in West Africa is also reported by the Ghana Statistics Service, Ghana Living Standards Survey and Multi
Indicator Survey.
5
Walk Free Foundation, The Global Slavery Index 2018, available at https://downloads.globalslaveryindex.org/ephemeral/GSI2018_FNL_180907_Digital-small-p-1566810875.pdf
6Verité (2019) Assessment of forced labor risk in the cocoa sector of Côte d’Ivoire
2

7

Cocoa Barometer 2018 accessible at: https://www.voicenetwork.eu/2018/04/2018-cocoa-barometer-released/ and Rainforest Alliancehttps://www.rainforest-alliance.org/articles/response-to-washington-post-report-on-challenges-in-cocoa-farming-in-west-africa
8
Verité (2019) Assessment of forced labor risk in the cocoa sector of Côte d’Ivoire

our suppliers to implement relevant actions in our supply chain and to support relevant responses byindustry and governments.
4. Our Strategic Approach to Protecting Children in the Cocoa Supply Chain
This PCAP outlines our approach to identifying, preventing and mitigating human rights issues, witha focus on child and forced labor in our extended cocoa supply chain. Grounded in the UNGPs andthe Mars C.A.R.E. framework, the PCAP also benefited from expert guidance and feedback from 13
nonprofit organizations, UN agencies, certification bodies and cocoa suppliers.
In addition to our investments to date, we estimate that about one third of our $1 billion C4G
investment will support the implementation of this plan.
Levers. Our strategic approach includes four main levers. We believe there are strong and direct links
between increased income, gender equity, and access to quality education, and reduced risk of childlabor and forced labor. These four levers are designed to be mutually reinforcing. We continue tolearn and test innovative approaches that are designed to reduce poverty and human rights risks in
our cocoa supply chain.

•

Robust Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation Systems:

Our first priority is to ensure our suppliers have in place robust systems designed to monitor, identify
and remediate cases of child or forced labor as appropriate. While households within a farmerorganization are directly monitored, prevention and remediation may include actions at both thehousehold and the community level. We have included specific monitoring and remediation
expectations in our Responsible Cocoa Specification and are implementing forced labor riskmonitoring in line with Verité’s recommendations.
Mars has collaborated with the International Cocoa Initiative (“ICI”) since its creation on initiatives
and actions to address child labor in the cocoa supply chain. ICI developed and implemented thefirst CLMRS models and is supporting the cocoa sector on a process of continuous innovation andadaptation in relation to CLMRS, pooling experiences and sharing its analysis widely with the sector.
We continue to collaborate closely with ICI and benefit from its expertise and ability to shareknowledge and best practice among its many members from industry, civil society, and multi-lateralorganizations.
We anticipate that we will need to reach more than 150,000 cocoa farming households with anestimated 500,000 children in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire by 2025 to meet our C4G ambitions. In otherorigin countries, we will determine where to prioritize our efforts by assessing human rights risks inthe cocoa sector in the country.
Data from ICI has shown that, following three years of implementation, CLMRS systems have thepotential to reduce by 50% the risk of child labor among children covered by the CLMRS. At our
direction, our suppliers began implementing this type of system in 2017, as the following diagramshows for the roll-out of CLMRS in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire:

The other levers of our strategic approach include, where relevant:•

Women’s Social and Economic Empowerment:

There are compelling moral, social and business reasons for prioritizing women’s social and economic
empowerment in the cocoa supply chain. Households and communities benefit when women
increase their income and have more decision-making power. The well-being of women in cocoa
communities is a critical link to family food security and nutrition, education, health and the long-term
prospects for a future of prosperous cocoa farmers. Women’s empowerment is linked to benefits for
productivity, for household quality of life and for children in the home. 9 Promoting women’s
economic empowerment in agriculture is critical, as women comprise on average 43 percent of the
agricultural labor force in developing countries10. According to UN Women, investing in women’s
economic empowerment sets a direct path towards gender equality, poverty eradication and9

A sustainable thriving cocoa sector for future generations, M. Greene et al. (June 2013).

10

Oxfam’s Conceptual Framework on Women’s Economic Empowerment, available athttps://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620269/gt-framework-womens-economic-empowerment-180118en.pdf?sequence=7

inclusive economic growth. Women make enormous contributions to economies, whether inbusinesses, on farms, as entrepreneurs or employees, or by doing unpaid care work at home11.
When women achieve greater financial income and decision making, farming households take better
decisions regarding the functioning of their farm and are more likely to integrate better agricultural
practices and farming technologies in the long term. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization(FAO) has found that if women had the same access to resources (training, technology, finance, etc.)
as men, they would produce 20-30% more on their farms and food security would be greatly
improved.12
Women in cocoa growing communities in West Africa are the main caregivers of children. Throughwomen’s empowerment and capacity building, women can acquire the knowledge and skills needed
to provide their children with experiences and opportunities that promote child protection, childlearning and development, including their social and emotional development.
Starting in 2016, together with CARE International, we developed a Village Savings and Loans
Association (VSLA) model that includes a number of essential building blocks beyond the standard
foundational savings and loans activity. This model first creates VSLAs in the first 12 months. Once inplace, these groups become an entry point in the community or through the farmer groups forsupporting interventions in four areas over a period of three years:
•
•
•
•

11

Financial inclusion and connections to formal finance
Entrepreneurship supporting income growth and diversification
Gender-equality interventions at individual, household and community levels (including
literacy)
A healthy family curriculum that promotes early-childhood development and child protection
by engaging parents and households.

UN Women (2013), ‘Economic Empowerment of Women’, Thematic Brief

12 FAO AT WORK 2010–2011 Women– key to food security

Based on CARE International’s implementation of this approach for Mars, we have strong initial
indications that each element of the VSLA model will not only contribute to increasing income forcocoa growing households but will also increase resilience and women’s confidence, strengthen local
governance and child protection, and engage couples in dialogues to reduce gender-based violence.
Our research shows that VSLAs can more than double women’s average savings when they aresupported for three years, as well as increase their social and economic empowerment, which isbelieved to contribute to the overall wellbeing of children and cocoa communities.
We are therefore expanding our partnership with CARE International with an investment of $10
million USD for a five-year period to reach beyond the 12,000 members we have supported
through mid-2019 and are targeting to reach an additional 50,000 women in cocoa communities
in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana by 2025. We will explore opportunities to further scale up the VSLA
program based on context, needs and relevance, as well as the capacity of our partner.
Mid-2019, we also engaged the Royal Tropical Institute in the Netherlands (KIT) to develop insightdriven community investment recommendations that aim to empower adolescent girls and young
women in our main sourcing countries: Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Indonesia. By taking a humancentered design approach, the daily lives of women and girls in our cocoa supply chain will be thestarting point to identify opportunities where both men and women can be engaged to improve
gender equality in their households and communities. The outcome of this “Resilience Journey” willcontinue to inform further interventions we will discuss with our suppliers and expert implementation
partners, such as Oxfam, as part of our Responsible Cocoa implementation and approach toprotecting children.

•

Increasing Access to Quality Education and Development Opportunities for Children:

All school-age children have a right to quality education. We consider access to quality education to
be a critical component of protecting children and driving better long-term futures for them in cocoagrowing communities. From early childhood development programs to primary education and youth
training, such as life skills and vocational training, the short and long-term benefits of education are
well known. Children and adolescents are less likely to be engaged in child labor when they spend
more time in school: ICI research13 has shown that child labor becomes less prevalent as educational
quality improves. In the long term, investing in education can have a positive circular effect: educatedchildren can earn higher incomes and contribute more to the development of their own children,
households and communities.
Since 2017, we have worked with the Transforming Education in Cocoa Communities (TRECC)
program funded by the Jacobs, Bernard van Leer and UBS Optimus Foundations, through theimplementation of a number of pilots. This work has provided valuable insights into the powerfullinkages between robust monitoring systems, women’s empowerment and education interventions.
The Jacobs Foundation has solid expertise in education and has been a critical partner in Côte d’Ivoire.
We will continue to learn from our work with Jacobs Foundation and other expert education
organizations to develop additional programs and interventions where relevant, particularly in othercountries.
In Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, we continue the dialogue with government and other expert childprotection stakeholders about the appropriate role we can play in the communities we source fromto protect children.

•

Increasing Income:

At Mars, we believe everyone working within our extended supply chains should earn sufficient
income to maintain a decent standard of living. Through the Sustainable Cocoa pillar of our C4G
strategy, we are defining and piloting models for increasing productivity and diversifying householdincome, through other cash crops and non-farm earnings. This work includes dialogue with our
suppliers, expert implementation partners and the Farmer Income Lab.

13

Education quality and child labor: a review of evidence from cocoa-growing communities in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana (June 2019)

As previously announced, Mars supports the Living Income Differential of $400 per metric ton
announced by the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana in July 2019 to ensure that farmers receivea higher income. The governments have also indicated that, from the 2020/2021 main crops, 70% of
a $2,600 per metric ton minimum price will be paid to farmers for their cocoa, a significant farmer
price increase versus recent years.
We expect that this cash increase will be supported by strong governance structures, instituted by
the governments, to ensure that increased income from cocoa not only goes to the farmers but also
does not lead to a corresponding expansion of farms into protected forest and to ensure no surge inchild and forced labor. We will continue to push for financial transparency by all actors and physicaltraceability that is mandated under the Cocoa and Forests Initiative. Finally, as mentioned above, our
VSLA program with CARE supports programs that will help increase incomes at the cocoa farming
household level.
5. External Collaborations
Collaboration is critical to making progress in addressing the complex and systemic issues prevalent
in the cocoa supply chains we rely on. We are keen to collaborate with others for increased impact,
and we strongly believe that a holistic approach has higher chances of success. We will continue towork with and look to expand our work with governments, suppliers, competitors, civil society,farmers and communities to advance our shared goals.
We will only achieve success through deep engagement with our suppliers, by integrating this plan
into our sourcing strategies and supplier relationships, and by aligning it with existing relevant
National Action Plans in the countries we source our cocoa from. Our actions will include engaging
with the governments and existing multi-stakeholder partnerships in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and othercountries as our plans develop.
The expert organizations we are working with on elements of this plan include:
CARE International: a leading humanitarian agency delivering emergency relief and long-term
international development projects. CARE is a global confederation of 14 members working together
to fight poverty in 95 countries. Mars and CARE work together in rolling out the Village Savings andLoans model to support women’s empowerment in our cocoa supply chain.
Jacobs Foundation: a charitable organization that invests in giving children and youth better
opportunities for positive development and equitable access to quality education. The Foundation isa key partner in the education element of this plan in West Africa.
Oxfam: A rights-based global development organization with 70+ years’ experience in more than 90
countries worldwide. Oxfam’s mission is to end the injustice of poverty and inequality throughsystemic change and the advancement of political, economic and social rights. Oxfam works with Mars
on topics related to income through expert advice and involvement in the Farmer Income Lab, as wellas on topics related to gender.
The International Cocoa Initiative (ICI): promotes child protection in cocoa growing communities. ICI
is a Swiss-based foundation that unites the forces of the cocoa and chocolate industry, civil society,farming communities and national governments in cocoa-producing countries to ensure a better
future for children and to advance the elimination of child labor. Mars has collaborated with ICI since
its creation on initiatives and actions to address child labor in the cocoa supply chain. We continue tocollaborate closely with ICI and benefit from its expertise and ability to share knowledge and bestpractice among its many members from industry, civil society, and multi-lateral organizations.
The Royal Tropical Institute (KIT): an independent center of expertise, education, intercultural
cooperation and hospitality dedicated to sustainable development. KIT is co-creating insight-driven
recommendations to help us design interventions to improve gender equality in our cocoa supply
chain in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Indonesia.
Verité: a leading labor and human rights nonprofit organization with deep expertise in addressing
the root causes of issues such as child and forced labor in global supply chains. In 2017, Mars andVerité launched a long-term, global strategic relationship focused on action, insight and dialogue
across Mars’ operations and supply chains.
6. Taking action
In close consultation with human rights experts, Mars has developed an action-oriented framework
to guide the development and deployment of human rights plans in relevant extended supply
chains. This CARE framework seeks to bring the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business andHuman Rights to life for practical business action. Our CARE framework informs our strategy andaction planning through four key phases – Commit, Assess, Respond, Engage. We Commit to policies,
standards and governance, we Assess the human rights issues we are facing, we Respond as we seek
to prevent and address human rights issues, and we Engage with stakeholders on our performance,
successes and challenges.
We have used the CARE framework to develop our Protecting Children Action Plan for cocoa. It has
provided an invaluable structure for our extensive internal and external dialogues about theappropriate steps we should take in this complex context. The following is a summary of our areas offocus for each aspect of the framework:
Commit: Integrate human rights into cocoa procurement systems and KPIs, commit appropriate
financial and human resources, and ensure that appropriate governance and support systems for
implementation are in place.
Assess: Conduct human rights risk assessments, build capabilities of suppliers and other partners,
seek to strengthen the human rights aspects of certification standards and rigorously evaluate theeffectiveness and impact of community-level programs.
Respond: Establishing robust data collection and management systems, deploy human rights due
diligence, monitoring, prevention and remediation programs in collaboration with partners, andsupport community development programs designed to address root-causes of human rights issues
in the areas of education, income and women’s empowerment.

Engage: Collaborate with and actively engage a wide range of relevant stakeholders, governments
and industry leaders to support improved human rights conditions and strengthen systems, andcommunicate our commitments, progress and challenges in a transparent manner externally.

APPENDIX: Understanding our cocoa supply chain

Mars sources around 400,000 cocoa bean equivalent metric tons annually, relying on 14 suppliers
who in turn source cocoa from an estimated 400,000 cocoa farming families in 13 countries in West
Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. Seventy percent of our sourcing comes from West Africa.
In some countries, farmers are organized into farmer groups (cooperatives or “Co-ops”).
Our suppliers deliver different types of cocoa products: beans, butter, liquor and powder. Our
strategic intention is to build long-term relationships with suppliers and their farmers, and to invest
in supplier programs that benefit farmer groups in the long term.
By 2025, we aim to have all cocoa we source produced by farmers
in our Responsible Cocoa programs, which is sourced via a mass
Barry Callebaut
General Cocoa
balance approach. Cocoa from these farmers will be physically
Blommer
Guan Chong
traceable from the farmer to the first point of purchase (the farmer
Cargill
JB Cocoaorganization, cooperative, or licensed buying company our
Cocoanect
Olam
suppliers buy from) and then it may be mixed by the supplier with
ECOM
Rizek
cocoa that does not come from the Responsible Cocoa program.
FC Stone
ToutonBeyond the first point of purchase, we accept an equivalent
volume of cocoa as long as the volume sold to Mars equals thevolume of Responsible Cocoa produced and is grown in the same origin.
Albrecht & Dill

Fuchs & Hoffman

In 2018, Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade certified volumes represented around 50% of our cocoa. In
2019, we began working closely with suppliers to convert this certified cocoa to meet our Responsible
Cocoa Specification which calls for traceability, child labor monitoring and remediation systems in atrisk areas, and increased premiums paid to farmers. The remaining 50% of our cocoa will align with
our Responsible Cocoa requirements by 2025. This will be monitored and verified independently.