Uzbekistan is the world’s sixth largest producer of cotton and the third largest exporter. For decades it has used the forced labour of schoolchildren harvesting cotton by hand (starting in primary grades). College and university students are also often forced to work in this industry. Children as young as nine are sent out to pick cotton. This practice is organised and controlled by the central government.
Early in each school year, the government orders schools to close and school administrators to send children out into the fields, where they remain until the cotton is harvested.
In 2009, schoolchildren and university students were forced to work in cotton fields for more than two months, in some cases missing school from September until the beginning of December. On 27 September more than 1000 students of Bukhara State University were forcibly sent to pick cotton under threat of expulsion.
Verbal orders come from the central government to provincial governors (khokims) to district governors, and from there to district education departments and down to individual schools.
Schools are assigned quotas to fill and the principals of the schools that do not meet their quota are threatened with dismissal. The consequences for children who object to taking part, or do not work to their teachers’ satisfaction are severe, with beatings being commonplace. Teachers have reported principals instructing them to have no mercy toward children who do not work hard enough. In 2008, students and teachers reported that police and local prosecutorial officials monitored the work of the children in the fields.
Community government officials, local police officers and even local prosecutors all pressure parents to make sure their children participate through such tactics as denial of pensions or social welfare payments, disconnecting electricity, gas and water, arrest, beatings, temporary detention and even threats of criminal prosecution. Faced with threats to plough under their garden plots (a critical means of subsistence for rural families) or having their electricity disconnected, parents feel they can’t say anything.
There are no days off. Though the government sets a recommended rate of pay, farmers often underpay the children, and school administrators withhold a portion of this pay with impunity. Children are largely responsible for bringing their own food and water. Injuries and illness are commonplace, including viral hepatitis infections and other diseases transmitted by contaminated food and water, with children often having to drink water from canals and ditches in the cotton fields. Children have sustained injuries while being transported to the fields in unsafe tractor-pulled carts intended to transport the raw cotton. No compensation for illnesses or injuries is paid; instead those who have complained about such incidents have been threatened with repercussions.
International campaign
In 2004 local activists started to call for the world to boycott cotton harvested in Uzbekistan until the use of forced child labour was ended. International brands and retailers including Tesco, Walmart, Target, Levi Strauss, Gap, Limited Brands, NIKE and Marks and Spencer agreed to ban Uzbek cotton from their supply chains.
Response by Uzbekistan
As international concern has been raised about the forced labour of schoolchildren in picking cotton in Uzbekistan, the government has tried to claim that any children in the fields must be there of their own accord. They claim the children are acting out of a sense of duty to their nation.
The government has also recently signed International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions No 138 and 182 dealing with the minimum age at which children can start work and the elimination of the worst forms of child labour respectively. It also issued a new decree that prohibits the use of forced child labour to harvest the cotton. However, these measures appear to be largely cosmetic, intended to reduce international pressure and a growing boycott movement. There is no indication on the ground that these measures have been implemented.
The government of Uzbekistan refused to invite the ILO to send observers to the 2009 harvest. To back its claims that it is not involved in orchestrating the forced child labour.
The alternative
A large number of unemployed people in Uzbekistan could pick the cotton if they were paid a reasonable wage, but instead thousands of Uzbek citizens migrate to neighbouring countries each season to pick cotton in places where they will get paid more than in Uzbekistan.
One of the key reasons for this is that cotton farmers must sell their crop to the government at the below-market rates that it sets. Once purchased, the government then sells the cotton on the global market for the actual market price. The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) reported that cotton farmers in Uzbekistan receive approximately one third of the actual value for their cotton.
Fairtrade goes some way to address these problems by identifying that the cotton in a garment is produced under standards that prohibit child labour through the Fairtrade certification and labelling system. Go to our first action for the month to find out more about Fairtrade certification for cotton*.
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