|
CERTIFICATION AND VERIFICATION ACTIVITIES
The certification and verification activities are crucial elements in fulfilling the Harkin-Engel protocol, and also informing policy decisions concerning the eliminations of WFCL in cocoa.
Certification and Verification Process.
The certification and verification process involves four main steps that are important to improving labor practices:
· Data collection at the community and farm level that provides a statistically representative view of child and adult labor practices;
· Transparent, publicly available reporting on the findings from data collection activities, and on what needs to be done to address the issues raised in the report;
· Remediation – programmes and interventions aimed at addressing issues identified in the data collection process with the view to improving the well-being of children;
· Independent verification of the certification reports.
Certification
The Government of Ghana submitted its Certification Report in June 2008. Certification for cocoa farming labor practices was established as part of the Harkin-Engel Protocol which committed the worldwide chocolate/cocoa industry to ensure that cocoa is farmed without the worst forms of child labor and forced adult labor. Ghana’s 2008 Certification Report received international acclamation. According to the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF): the release of a 2008 cocoa farming certification report by the government of Ghana is a significant, positive development in the effort to address labor issues and improve the quality of life on cocoa farms in West Africa. As Bill Guyton, President of WCF put it: “never before has there been a successful attempt to collect information on labor practices for a commodity produced on hundreds of thousands of small, remote farms”
Verification
Independent verification, which is a vital activity within the cocoa certification framework, began in Ghana in April 2008. The verification team was made up of Hedge Ghana, Khulisa from South Africa and FAFO from Norway. The team interviewed various parties of the NPECLC, including the NPM, researchers, data collectors and some district and community members in the places where data were collected during the survey. A mini-survey was also conducted by the team to ascertain the methods, processes and results of the scale-up survey performed by the NPECLC.
The findings of the independent verification team were released in December, 2008 and Ghana’s Cocoa Certification Report for 2008 was accepted unconditionally. This put Ghana on a
higher pedestal and authenticates the quality of work Ghana undertook in the year 2008. However, it was recommended that Ghana weight the result of the scale-up survey to ascertain the national estimates. NPECLC has resolved to improve upon the performance taking consideration inputs from the Independent Cocoa Verification Board (ICVB) and other partners.
Ghana again has since August, 2009 submitted its report on weighted data on cocoa labour survey in Ghana (scale-up study, 2007/2008)
|
