Statistics on Working Children and Education

In 2012, Côte d’Ivoire made a moderate advancement in efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor. The Government adopted a National Action Plan targeting child trafficking, exploitation and labor; adopted an updated list of hazardous activities prohibited to children; hired 8,000 new teachers; launched a national awareness campaign targeting the worst forms of child labor; and began participating in a project to support the collection of nationally-representative survey data on child labor in cocoa growing areas of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. However, Côte d’Ivoire still lacks a compulsory education law and gaps remain in the enforcement of laws. Furthermore, there are no programs to assist children found in the worst forms of child labor in other types of agriculture besides cocoa, or in mining, domestic service, and commercial sexual exploitation. Throughout the reporting period, children continued to engage in hazardous work in agriculture. Such work occurred particularly on cocoa farms, sometimes under conditions of forced labor