Mehdi Mahbub
Uzbekistan, a country with 448,978 square kilometers area and around 35 million population, is the center of central Asia and has the potential to become one of the center of global textile and apparel industry, thanks to its geographical location, abundance of raw materials and easily trainable workforce. For centuries, Uzbekistan was a very important business hub of the great silk route which connected China with Europe and the Middle East. Because of China’s belt and road initiative as well as Uzbek and other neighboring countries’ infrastructure projects, world’s one of the largest apparel consumer market – Europe
The region has a long track record of producing world class cotton, silk, and wool. Currently, about 7,000 various types of enterprises are involved in textile related industries in Uzbekistan. Capacity for production of cotton fiber in the amount of 1.4 million tons has been created, of which about 60 percent is used to meet the needs of domestic textile companies. One of the policy priorities of Uzbekistan, the world’s fifth-largest cotton exporter, is further development of its textile industry. Annually, the country grows about 3.5 to 4 million tons of raw cotton, produces around 1.2 million tons of cotton fiber. Uzbek textile products are exported to more than 55 countries. The main export markets are the CIS countries, primarily Russia, as well as the countries of European Union, Latin America, Korea, China, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Iran, Israel, the United States, United Kingdom and many others. Russia and the CIS countries are the largest importers of Uzbek textile enterprises. They account for more than 50% of all deliveries, around 25% are exported to South Asia, around 15% to Europe, balance to Middle East, Africa and other parts of the world.
Upon assuming power in 2016, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev began putting in place economic, financial and foreign policy reforms in Uzbekistan. Within a year, world financial and monetary agencies have upgraded positions of Uzbekistan. According to the World Bank estimates, pre-Covid period, its annual GDP growth surpassed 6%. The World Bank has praised Uzbekistan’s rise in Doing Business rankings.
For many years, Uzbekistan Textile Industry has suffered for the embargo on its products due to alleged forced labor. Many international brands have stopped using Uzbek cotton. Thanks to successful dialogue between Uzbek government and International Labor Organization as well as other stakeholders, the issue has been resolved and Uzbekistan has started to get its benefits.
Cotton Campaign, the US based coalition of human rights NGOs, independent trade unions, brand associations, investors & academics, has been campaigning against forced labour in cotton production. Recently, the following press release was issued as Cotton Campaign – Government of Uzbekistan Joint Statement on Ending the Call for a Global Boycott of Uzbek Cotton.
On March 10, 2022, a joint press briefing was held at the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations of the Republic of Uzbekistan to discuss working conditions in the cotton sector of Uzbekistan. The speakers of the event were: representatives of the “Cotton Campaign” International Coalition, Tanzila Narbayeva – Chairperson of the Oliy Majlis Senate of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Nozim Khusanov – Minister of Employment and Labour Relations as well as representatives of international brands and civil society.
Following the negotiations and consultations, which were held in a constructive climate of mutual respect and in the framework of the Cotton Campaign’s visit to Uzbekistan, the press briefing participants note the following:
1. Since 2011, 331 international brands and retailers, united by the “Cotton Campaign” international non-governmental organization (international coalition), have declared a boycott of cotton products from Uzbekistan for the reason of using child and forced labour during the harvest season of raw cotton.
2. Since 2017, the Government of Uzbekistan has been conducting a progressive dialogue with members of the Coalition in order to remove the so-called “cotton boycott”. Thus, following a series of meetings and negotiations in June 2019, the Coalition presented a “Roadmap for Reforms” to the Government of Uzbekistan. The document reflects a comprehensive vision of eradicating forced labour in the cotton industry and ensuring the effectiveness of ongoing reforms.
3. Under the leadership of President Sh.M. Mirziyoyev, Uzbekistan has taken historic steps in the fight against forced labour: the Government has criminalized the use of forced labour of adults and abolished quotas for cotton production, in accordance with the recommendations of the ILO and the World Bank the wages of pickers have been significantly raised and thereby the number of volunteers has dramatically increased.
4. In five years, the country has walked through massive forced labour to its elimination. For the first time in its practice of conducting independent monitoring of forced labor since 2009, the Uzbek Human Rights Forum, a leading partner of the Cotton Campaign coalition, confirms the absence of systematic forced labour in the 2021 cotton harvest season.
Given the progress made in protecting the workers’ rights and complete eradicating systematic forced labour, the International Coalition Cotton Campaign announces an end to the call for a global boycott of Uzbek cotton.
Coalition members note that this historic achievement is the result of many years of hard work by Uzbek civil society activists, international human rights activists and transnational brands, as well as the commitment of the Government of Uzbekistan to the eradication of forced labour.
Members of the coalition highly appreciate the role of Sh.M. Mirziyoyev – the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan in initiating and implementing the historic reforms necessary to end forced labour and reform the cotton sector in Uzbekistan.
At the same time, recognizing the need to take further steps to strengthen the civil society’s role and create an enabling environment for subsequent independent monitoring of compliance with labour rights, the Parties expressed their readiness to continue active cooperation in order to ensure transparency and traceability of the supply chain.
According to the above statement, Cotton Campaign said that Uzbek cotton would no longer be banned worldwide. During the same time, the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights, a frontline partner of the Cotton Campaign, released a report saying the Uzbek government didn’t use forced labor in the 2021 cotton harvest.
On March 6, 2020, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev issued a historic proclamation that abolished production quotas in the country’s cotton industry, ending a system that had been in place since the 1920s under the Soviet Union’s Gosplan system. By encouraging the use of forced labor, the quota system, which had been a fundamental feature of the Uzbek economy for more than a century, contributed to systematic human rights breaches. The Uzbek cotton harvest is the world’s largest seasonal labor mobilization, with over 2 million people flocking to the fields to pick cotton by hand.
“This breakthrough in ending systematic, state-imposed forced labor was catalyzed by the brave labor and human rights defenders in Uzbekistan who took great risks to expose human rights violations in the cotton sector. Their years of fearless monitoring and reporting drove the world to take action to protect Uzbek workers,” said Umida Niyazova, director of Uzbek Forum for Human Rights.
In recent years, the Uzbek government has increasingly lobbied for the boycott to be lifted, even enlisting the support of former political prisoners in 2019 to argue that significant progress had been made in abolishing forced labor.
That year, the United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs issued an official notification that Uzbek cotton would be removed from a list of items produced using child labor. It remained on the Labor Department’s list of commodities made with forced labor or child labor, a broader category. Meanwhile, the International Labor Organization stated in its harvest report for 2018 that “forced labor during the [2018] harvest was reduced by 48 percent compared to 2017.”
On March 1, 2022 the following news was published by International Labour Organization (ILO) on its official website. We are pleased to present the ILO report for the readers of The Apparel Digest.
FORCED and CHILD LABOUR
Uzbek cotton is free from systemic child labour and forced labour
Almost two million people are recruited every year for the annual cotton harvest in Uzbekistan. The country has succeeded in eradicating systemic forced labour and systemic child labour during the 2021 cotton production cycle, according to new ILO findings.
GENEVA (ILO News) – An estimated two million children have been taken out of child labour and half a million adults out of forced labour since the reform process of the Uzbekistan’s cotton sector began seven years ago.
According to the 2021 ILO Third-Party Monitoring Report of the Cotton Harvest in Uzbekistan based on eleven thousand interviews with cotton pickers, 99 per cent of those involved in the 2021 cotton harvest worked voluntarily. All provinces and districts had very few or no forced labour cases.
About one per cent were subject to direct or perceived forms of coercion. The data shows that 0.47 per cent of respondents reported direct or perceived threats by Mahalla representatives (local officials at the community level) related to social benefits, and 0.12 per cent of respondents reported direct or perceived threats by employers related to loss of employment or wages.
The findings are the latest from the ILO Third-Party Monitoring project, which has been monitoring the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan since 2015 under an agreement with the World Bank.
A majority of cotton pickers who took part in interviews said that working conditions had improved since 2020. Only five per cent said that the conditions were worse than the previous year. This relates to transportation, food, access to water, hygienic and other facilities.
According to the report, one in eight people of working age in Uzbekistan participated in the cotton harvest – the world’s largest recruitment effort. Sixty-two per cent of pickers were women, and the vast majority were from rural areas.
“Our collaboration has yielded good results – because after 7 years, this year’s report shows that Uzbek cotton is free from systemic child labour and systemic forced labour,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder. “There is now an opportunity for Uzbekistan to realize its goal of moving up the value chain and to create millions of decent full-time jobs in textile and garment manufacturing.”
Uzbekistan is the sixth largest cotton producer in the world. Under the leadership of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the country has embarked on reforms that include the modernization of the country’s former agricultural economic model and the eradication of child labour and forced labour in the annual cotton harvest that was previously prevalent.
“We undertook these reforms to benefit our people and our economy. The starting point was to abolish the state order system for cotton production but we didn’t stop there,” said Tanzila Narbaeva, the Chair of the Uzbek Senate and Head of the National Commission to Combat Forced Labour and Human Trafficking.
“We worked tirelessly to change thinking and behaviour through awareness raising campaigns on labour rights. We criminalized child labour and forced labour. We enhanced our labour inspection and we engaged in dialogue with civil society to identify common ground and solutions.”
Jonas Astrup, Chief Technical Advisor of the ILO TPM Project in Uzbekistan said that monitors observed new developments which indicate the democratization of the labour market in Uzbekistan.
“For the first time, the minimum wage was consulted with not only the government but also the trade unions and employers of Uzbekistan. We also observed an emerging trend of collective bargaining at the grass-root level. Cotton pickers would engage in informal wage negotiations with farmers and textile clusters. Many pickers were paid well above the minimum wage as a result.”
Shukrat Ganiev, an independent human rights activist who has been monitoring the cotton harvest with ILO for several years said, “We need to shift our focus to decent job creation. People in Uzbekistan need jobs with decent wages and good working conditions. To get there we need international brands and retailers to engage in responsible sourcing from Uzbekistan.”
The ILO Third-Party Monitoring project is implemented with support from the European Union, the US State Department, the Government of Switzerland, and Germany. It will conclude in May this year and by request of the government, and workers’ and employers’ organizations in Uzbekistan a feasibility study for a Better Work programme will be undertaken. The Better Work Programme is a joint initiative of the ILO and The World Bank Group.
This article is prepared based on reports from Cotton Campaign, ILO News, Uztextileprom.
