New State Department Report Details Forced Child Labor in Uzbek Cotton

This year's newly released Human Rights Country Report on Uzbekistan from the U.S. Department of State documents the "government-compelled forced labor in cotton harvesting." As this country's cotton makes its way into many of the clothes on our backs, children continue to be compelled by the brutal dictatorship in control of Uzbekistan to produce this major export. The new State Department report provides yet further documentation of the egregious abuses committed by the Karimov regime against this nation's children.

The State Department describes Uzbekistan as an "authoritarian state" where President Karimov "dominated political life and exercised nearly complete control over the other branches" of government. The government tightly controls its citizens and spreads fear through restricted elections, restrictions on free speech rights, harassment of civil society and unjust imprisonment and torture of its citizens. Additionally, the government's policy of forcing children to leave school during the harvest season to pick cotton is particularly egregious.

The new human rights report on Uzbekistan found that in the past year:

Authorities compelled schoolchildren, university students, teachers, medical workers, government personnel, military personnel, and nonworking segments of the population to pick cotton. Credible reporting indicated the use of forced adult labor during the cotton harvest was higher than in the previous year. Local officials, under central authority, reportedly compelled the adults under threats of adverse employment actions or denial of social benefit payments. Authorities expected teachers and school administrators to participate in the harvest either as supervisors or by picking cotton themselves; schoolteachers often bore responsibility for ensuring their students met quotas. Students and adults who did not make their quotas were sometimes subject to ridicule or abuse by local administrators or police.

The State Department goes on to say that "local administrators throughout the country closed schools and universities for up to eight weeks and transported students to work in the cotton fields. Although the majority of students appeared to be over the age of 12 years old, 11-year-olds were not uncommon, and there were isolated reports of some students as young as 10-years-old having to work in the fields."

While many observers and international institutions have spoken out publicly about the well-documented and widespread abuses of human and worker rights in Uzbekistan, the government will continue to exploit its children, farmers and workers until condemnation grows stronger among the sectors that prop up the regime.

Garment brands are beginning to stand up and publicly oppose the forced labor of children on Uzbekistan's cotton fields and many are working to stop sourcing Uzbek cotton until the government ends its abuses. However, additional economic pressure is necessary to bring the message closer to the Karimov regime's pocketbook. Children's clothing brand Gymboree continues to remain silent about the exploitation of children in the cotton industry while its competitors are working to help increase the pressure on Uzbekistan.

The Uzbek dictatorship also relies on those viewed positively by the international community to lend itself a friendly public image. Pop star and human rights supporter Sting was rewarded handsomely for his private performance for the family of Uzbekistan's dictator and has refused to donate the profits from this brutal regime to organizations working to improve the human rights condition in Uzbekistan.

You can take action to end forced child labor in Uzbekistan's cotton industry by asking Gymboree and Sting to speak out and help increase the pressure on this dictatorship to end its abuses.

Photo credit: International Labor Rights Forum (with permission)