Chocolate companies must guarantee fair cocoa prices to cocoa farmers. These prices must be high enough to provide cocoa farming families with at least a living income that meets the the cost of living in their country. Only if cocoa producers earn a living income they can pay living wages to their workers and harvesters and thus renounce child labour in cocoa production. Living wages are a human right.
Chocolate companies must guarantee to respect human rights and decent working conditions. To this end, they must respect the internationally recognized principles of the United Nations (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and actively implement them along their entire supply chain. In particular, in accordance with ILO Conventions 182 and 138, they must end the use of exploitative child labour in their supply chains.
Chocolate companies must protect farmers from the massive health risks posed by highly hazardous pesticides used in cocoa farming. Compliance with human and labour rights is part of chocolate companies due diligence. To this end, chocolate companies must end the use of pesticides in their supply chains by 2025, which are banned in the EU due to their harmful effects on health and the environment.
Chocolate companies must fulfil their environmental due diligence obligations. This includes ending deforestation caused by cocoa cultivation and contributing to climate protection. To achieve this, chocolate companies must:
make their supply chain fully traceable all the way to the plantation. This is the only way they can ensure that their cocoa does not come from protected forests.
Set up investment programmes to help cocoa farmers switch from conventional to organic cocoa farming and promote the establishment of agroforestry systems. Furthermore, the payment of fair cocoa prices to cocoa farming families is a prerequisite for sustainable cocoa cultivation without deforestation.
"Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable renumeration ensuring for him and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection."
(Article 23; Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
We demand from the federal government:
The German government must amend the German Supply Chain Act by explicitly enshrining the right to a living income and making companies liable for human rights violations along their entire supply chain. Those affected by human rights violations must be able to hold companies in Germany accountable in court.
The federal government must end price dumping by chocolate companies and retailers along the entire supply chain. The purchase of agricultural commodities below production costs must be banned as an unfair trading practice. Fair cocoa prices for cocoa farmers are a non-negotiable prerequisite to guarantee their right to a living income.
The German government must stop the export of highly hazardous pesticides and their active ingredients that are not approved in the EU in order to avoid endangering people and the environment in cocoa-growing regions. The use of highly hazardous pesticides must be banned in state-supported sustainability projects.
