Blockchain System’s Potential to Protect Children’s Learning and Eliminate Child Labor
Chocolate for a break from work, or cocoa for a breather. What if the cacao used as a raw material was harvested by children who worked in exchange for the time they were supposed to spend at school? In order to protect children’s educational opportunities, an initiative to eradicate child labor using blockchain technology has begun in Cote d’Ivoire in West Africa, the world’s largest cocoa-producing country.
One of the major problems of child labor is that children cannot go to school.
What is a blockchain-based child labor deterrent system? In order to eliminate child labor, it is important to make the production process of cacao transparent, so that buyers such as exporters, retailers, and consumers can understand issues on the producer side such as child labor and farmer poverty.
In order to create such a chain of happiness, JICA has established a blockchain-based child labor monitoring system. By utilizing blockchain technology in the database, producers and buyers can share reliable information. It is also expected that this blockchain mechanism will be extended to provide financial services (payment, lending) available to farmers. The government of Cote d’Ivoire is also aware of the need to eradicate child labor, and is taking steps such as regularly publishing information on the status of child labor monitored by NGOs and resident volunteers patrolling farmland.
© Source JICA