Recently Uzbekistan has begun to receive some scrutiny over the use of forced child labor in the cotton fields, however for many its long over due. The use of children in the cotton fields dates back to the Soviet era, and as a signatory of The Convention on the Rights of the Child, Uzbekistan has received little if any repercussions by the international community over the years.
Uzbekistan is the worlds third largest exporter of cotton, and according to UNICEF some 1.4 million children, 22.6% of the population 5-14 years old, are forced to work in the exploitive government run industry. However the Uzbek government has repeatedly denied the forcible use of children in the cotton harvest.
In an open letter to the European Council, The US Administration, The International Cotton Advisory Committee, UNICEF, and the International Labor Organization (ILO), dated January 17, 2007, a group of some 100 Uzbek dissidents and activists abroad and 40 in Uzbekistan, say that use of forced child labor in the Uzbek cotton industry has become a “deliberate state policy” aimed at “acquiring extra profits.”
Nadejda Atayeva, a former schoolteacher, who was fired from her job in Uzbekistan for refusing to send sick schoolchildren to the cotton fields, now runs a Paris-based Association on Human Rights in Central Asia, stated the signatories are all Uzbek's with firsthand experience of conditions in Uzbek cotton fields. Atayeva claimed that those who deny their accusations appear to have been deceived by the Uzbek government. “Our appeal is based on our concern over the fate of Uzbekistan's children, who are deprived of a proper education at the expense of collecting ‘white gold,'” Atayeva says (Cotton Industry Targeted By Child-Labor Activists).
The letter directly followed the November 15, 2007, Call for Uzbekistan cotton boycott by a group of civil society activists from Uzbekistan. Following the call for the boycott the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) issued a letter, dated November 30, 2007, stating that a boycott of Uzbek cotton in international markets would be “highly impractical”, and .
The media revelations over the past year, including an eye opening expose by the BBC, of the abuses of children in Uzbekistan have promoted some companies to act, such as Swedish based H&M, Finland's Marimekko, and Estonia's Krenholm. The newest companies to join the boycott are the UK's Tesco and Marks and Spencer, who announced this month that they will no longer purchase cotton from Uzbekistan. Tesco stated that they will now required all suppliers to identify the source of raw cotton. While these efforts are a giant step forward, they are a long way off from freeing Uzbek children from the cotton fields. The true fate of the children lies in the hands of the Uzbek government who continue to deny and skirt the truth, and the international community who looks on with blind eyes. Until both the Uzbek government and the international community on the whole act to make an honest industry of Uzbek cotton.
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Related Links:
Please see my previous post, Child Picked CottonCentral Asia's Child Labor
The Curse of Cotton: Central Asia's Destructive Monoculture
The Environmental Justice Foundation – Child Labour and Cotton in Uzbekistan
Focus on child labour in southern cotton sector
Elliott Cannell's paper, 'the Role of Children in Uzbekistan's Cotton Harvest’, published at the SOAS confrence 'the Cotton Sector in Central Asia: Economic Policy and Development’,
