Human Rights and Corporate Responsibility in the Cocoa Industry: Is the Creating Shared Value Model a Solution to the Child Labor Problem?

Chocolate is a commodity enjoyed the world over, with annual sales exceeding $100 billion. But the chocolate industry has a dark side. Many cocoa beans used for chocolate production are harvested using illegal child labor. This paper analyzes the human rights protection system in the cocoa industry and two contending frameworks that large multinational corporations have taken to alleviate the problem of poverty and child labor in cocoa-growing nations: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the Creating Shared Value (CSV). Although both frameworks seek to combat workplace abuse and promote community development, they approach the problem from different angles and in many cases offer different solutions. Additionally, the paper provides recommendations that the cocoa industry’s leading players could adopt to reduce the amount of child labor in their supply chains and offer a more wholesome and ethical product.