Anna Thinius News Today

The pandemic has fuelled trafficking of children to work in mines and cocoa plantations

For Ivorian police commissioner Luc Zaka, this year was an especially good one. He and his team rescued more than 1,750 children from harsh work on the country’s cocoa plantations, and helped put several traffickers behind bars. “We had to do everything possible to ensure our cocoa is quality cocoa that is not produced by children,” said Zaka, who heads a specialist unit fighting child labor in Ivory Coast — the world’s biggest cocoa supplier. Named International Year for the Eliminati...

Named International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour, 2021 was meant to boost efforts to stamp out the practice. But despite some success stories, global ...

Despite some success stories that put child traffickers behind bars, global progress was patchy and COVID-19 fueled abuses.