Trade, Development and Child Labor: Regulation and Law in the Case of Child Labor in the Cocoa Industry

Bertrand William () and Elke de Buhr ()
Additional contact information
Bertrand William: Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA
Elke de Buhr: Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA

The Law and Development Review, 2015, vol. 8, issue 2, 503-521

Abstract: Voluntary private sector agreements are common as a tool to regulate industries including the enforcement of labor laws in domestic and overseas markets. Agreements cover many different industries, and they differ greatly in scope, implementation and monitoring. Challenging to enforce, they have often been criticized by consumer groups and have sometimes failed. This article examines one of the oldest and most prominent examples of a voluntary industry agreement in agriculture, the Harkin-Engel Protocol targeted at addressing the worst forms of child labor in the cocoa sectors of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. In 2006, the authors of this paper were first tasked by the U.S. Department of Labor to oversee the implementation of the Harkin-Engel Protocol on behalf of the U.S. Congress. They have since documented the Protocol’s implementation for more than eight years. This paper discusses the authors’ experience with private sector voluntary agreements for achieving social change in developing countries at the example of the Protocol. Special issues around the role of regulation and law within this process are our focus in this article.

Keywords: child labor rights; voluntary agreements; international development; worst forms of child labor; cocoa industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/ldr-2015-0019 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:lawdev:v:8:y:2015:i:2:p:503-521:n:6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ldr/html

DOI: 10.1515/ldr-2015-0019

Access Statistics for this article

The Law and Development Review is currently edited by Yong-Shik Lee

More articles in The Law and Development Review from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().