New report highlights how the
cotton harvest fosters modern day slavery and extortion
In 2014, the government of
Uzbekistan forced more than a million of its own citizens to pick cotton, and
officials extorted individuals and businesses, including multinational
companies, at a larger scale as part of the annual Uzbek cotton harvest,
according to a new report released by the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights
(UGF).
Although the government did
not systematically mobilize children throughout the country to pick cotton, as
it had in previous years, this did not decrease the massive scale of forced
labor, as the government instead coerced more adults to pick cotton in their
place.
The study of the 2014 cotton
harvest also found an unprecedented degree of extortion of individuals and
businesses that fueled the forced labor system, including keeping people in
fields even though there is no more cotton to pick so people are still forced
to pay fees for food and board, etc., and setting unattainable quotas so people
had to pay to make up deficits.
“The scope of the bribery is
simply astounding,” said Umida Niyazova, UGF director. “At all levels of
government, officials take their cut, and Uzbek citizens, particularly public
sector workers are forced to pay or pick cotton through intimidation and fear.”
The
Government’s Riches, the People’s Burden: Human Rights Violations in
Uzbekistan’s 2014 Cotton Harvest documents the 2014 cotton harvest with data gathered by human rights
monitors and interviews of hundreds of people forced to participate. The report
finds that in 2014, more public sector workers were mobilized than in previous
years, handicapping essential public services such as healthcare and education
during the two months of the cotton harvest.
“Students and the sick suffer
during the harvest time,” said Nadejda Atayeva, president of the Association
for Human Rights in Central Asia. “Schools and health clinics cannot function
with so many staff sent to pick cotton. Students cannot receive the quality of
education that they deserve, and medical care is inaccessible to people, even
when they are very ill.”
The increase in adult workers
was, according to the report, to make up for a substantial decrease in the
number of children forced to harvest cotton. However, monitors still found many
17-year-olds were forcibly mobilized with their schools, and officials resorted
to forcing younger children to pick cotton in several incidents.
At least 17 people died during
the harvest, the report found, and numerous people were injured, an increase
from previous years. The report also documents brutal working conditions.
Workers toiled in the fields for 10 hours a day with little rest and no days
off, and their living conditions were often unheated, overcrowded, and lacking
clean water and washing facilities.
The report found that
widespread extortion characterized the 2014 harvest more than in previous
years, with officials lining their pockets at every level. Authorities extorted
contributions from businesses small and large, payments from individuals to
avoid field labor, and payments from forced laborers for food, transportation,
and unmet quotas. The government’s practices in the cotton sector, the report
states, undermine rule of law and nurtures a culture of impunity. Two
multinational companies – Telia Sonera and Telenor – admitted to making
contributions to the harvest in 2014, claiming it is a prerequisite for
conducting business in Uzbekistan, and employees of another multinational
corporation, General Motors, reported for a third straight year that they were
sent to pick cotton.
“We’ve long known about the
human rights risk associated with cotton sourced from Uzbekistan, but these
findings raise alarms for any company invested in Uzbekistan,” said Emily
Kaiser, sustainability analyst at Calvert Investments. “As the Uzbek government
feels more international pressure to end its forced labor system, the system is
becoming more volatile and destructive. It seems to be increasingly difficult
for any company in Uzbekistan not to support the forced labor system in some
form.”
The Cotton Campaign supports
the report’s recommendations to the Uzbek government: to permit unfettered
access to international organizations, journalists, and independent civil
society, and to undertake fundamental reforms of the cotton sector that would
eliminate forced labor. As UGF notes in the report, it is also incumbent on
Uzbekistan’s international partners, including the United States, European
Union, World Bank and International Labour Organization, to use their influence
to impress upon the Uzbek government the necessity of these reforms.
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Watch a video of the 2014 cotton harvest, by Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights: https://youtu.be/VwBFkYoQ51E
The Cotton
Campaign is a global coalition of
labor, human rights, investor and business organizations coalesced to end
forced labor of children and adults in the cotton sector of Uzbekistan.
For more information, please
contact:
In Berlin, for Uzbek-German
Forum for Human Rights, Umida Niyazova, +49-17687-532684, umida.niyazova@uzbekgermanforum.org (English, Russian, Uzbek)
In New York, for the Cotton
Campaign, Matthew Fischer-Daly (English, Spanish): +1-347-266-1351, cottoncampaigncoordinator@gmail.com
In Paris, for the Association
for Human Rights in Central Asia, Nadejda Atayeva,
+ 33-6-17-46-1963 n.atayeva@gmail.com ( French, Russian)
In Washington DC, for Calvert
Investments, Melinda Lovins, 301-657-7089, melinda.lovins@calvert.com,
In London, for Anti-Slavery
International, Jakub Sobik, j.sobik@antislavery.org, and Klara Skrivankova, k.skrivankova@antislavery.org (English and German)
For more reporting by the
Uzbek-German Forum on cotton and forced labor in Uzbekistan, see: http://uzbekgermanforum.org/
For more information on the
Association for Human Rights in Central Asia, visit http://www.ahrca.org/
For more information on the
Cotton Campaign, see: www.cottoncampaign.org
