Combating Forced Labor and Labor Trafficking of Adults and Children
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This project builds the capacity of the government and businesses to expand and better coordinate ongoing labor trafficking enforcement efforts in Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, and Benin. By putting the right tools in the hands of labor inspectors, business owners, workers, and service providers, the project will advance greater supply chain transparency and accountability.
The Problem
Despite a relatively strong national anti-trafficking legal framework, forced labor and labor trafficking have been documented in a number of key economic sectors in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Benin. Government anti-trafficking efforts are limited by a lack of systematic data collection, monitoring and analysis. Meanwhile, private sector efforts to monitor labor practices have for the most part focused narrowly on the prevention of child labor in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire's high-profile cocoa industry. Companies, governments and others face the persistent challenge of identifying the point at which grueling or poorly paid work becomes involuntary (forced labor) – and thus violates international standards and national laws.
Our Strategy
The project helps law enforcement, private sector due diligence monitors, social service and civil society organizations including workers’ unions, and workers themselves to prevent, detect and eliminate forced labor and labor trafficking in supply chains. By adopting an indicator-based framework developed by the ILO, stakeholders share a common vocabulary and set of indicators to coordinate anti-labor-trafficking efforts.
The project leverages the programming and monitoring infrastructure already in place to combat child labor in cocoa and expand its reach to other sectors known to be at risk of using forced labor. FLIP contributes to the development of a common framework on forced labor indicators through creating educational resources on forced labor; offering trainings on forced labor; consulting on the integration of forced labor indicators into monitoring systems; and conducting a Training of Trainers for labor inspectors.
Project partners also are collecting up-to-date qualitative and quantitative data on indicators of forced labor currently present in the cocoa, palm oil, gold mining sectors of Ghana and in the cocoa and coffee sectors of Côte d’Ivoire. This data is fed into piloting a streamlined approach to forced labor monitoring. FLIP integrates this approach into existing efforts, encouraging coordination among stakeholders and providing labor inspectors with the tools and training they need. Through this integrated approach, the project is promoting a scalable, streamlined model for monitoring and enforcement.
Additionally, the project ensures that national and regional data collection, prevention and remediation efforts are aligned between Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Benin.
Results
- Following a needs assessment of Ghana’s labor inspectorate, the FLIP project developed an interactive, virtual training of trainers curriculum on forced labor in collaboration with the Ghanaian Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations (MELR). The curriculum is designed to train labor inspectors on how to identify, address, and prevent forced labor using the ILO forced labor indicators approach and how to in turn deliver training to colleagues. As of September 2023, the forced labor training has been institutionalized at MELR through the training of all staff in the Ministry and at the Ghana Police Service nationwide.
- In May 2020, the project launched a free online learning resource featuring two courses: Forced Labor Frameworks and The ILO Forced Labor Indicators. Government ministries, business owners, workers, and organizations providing social services use these resources to build the capacity of their staff in forced labor and related issues.
- As of March 2024, some 1,850 individuals in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana have been trained on how to identify and assess forced labor. Those engaged include 1,235 government officials, 414 representatives of civil society organizations, and 201 members of the private sector.
- To date, 243 labor inspectors in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana have been trained on how to monitor for forced labor. 75 percent of labor inspectors trained by the project in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana have shown improved knowledge of the forced labor indicators, and 95 percent of labor inspectors have reported that they have applied learning from the trainings to their work.
- Thirty-two institutions have drafted action plans for adopting the ILO forced labor indicators approach, including 19 in Ghana, 11 in Côte d’Ivoire, and 2 global institutions.
- Grantee:
- Verité
- Implementing Partners:
- International Cocoa Initiative, NORC
- Contact Information:
- globalkids@ilab.dol.gov / Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking (OCFT)
- Tags:
- Child Labor
- Agriculture
- Awareness
- Capacity-Building
- Cocoa
- Coffee
- Enforcement
- Forced Labor
- Gold
- Labor Inspectorate
- Monitoring
- Palm Oil
- Supply Chains
- Toolkit
