(Русская версия)

​Cotton is a commodity at the center of the global economy, yet cotton production is plagued by egregious human rights violations. While rights abuses persist in cotton production in many countries, state-led forced labor systems of cotton production remain intact in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the fifth and seventh largest exporters of cotton worldwide. The governments of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan use forced labor on an industry-wide scale for the benefit of government elite. Ending forced labor in the two countries would relieve hundreds of thousands of people of compulsory fieldwork each year.

Annually, the Uzbek and Turkmen governments force farmers to grow cotton and citizens to pick cotton, all under threat of penalty, including the loss of land, job loss, expulsion from school, and docked pay. In Uzbekistan, hundreds of thousands of school teachers, doctors, nurses and other citizens are victims of forced labor each year. In Turkmenistan, officials force tens of thousands of education and health-care workers, other public-sector workers and private-sector workers to work in the cotton fields each year. Both governments threaten, detain, assault and imprison citizens who attempt to report this human rights crisis. Profits from cotton sales solely benefit the government elite in these two Central Asian nations, and the forced-labor cotton ultimately ends up on retail shelves worldwide and therefore in the clothes we buy and wear.

The Cotton Campaign is working to end this injustice!

Since 2007, the Cotton Campaign has advocated with governments, companies and investors to use their leverage to end this continuous and systematic human rights violation. Our advocacy has contributed to key steps towards securing fundamental labor rights for Uzbek and Turkmen citizens:

• After decades of using forced-child labor, starting in 2013 the Uzbek government ended its policy of forcibly mobilizing children nationwide, and in 2014 it committed to work with the International Labour Organization to apply international labor standards, including the prohibition of forced labor;
• Over 270 brand-name retailers have committed to avoid Uzbek cotton until forced labor of children and adults has ended, and several companies have committed to avoid Turkmen cotton while it is produced by state-led forced labor;
• The United States blocked imports of Uzbek cotton yarn because it was produced with forced-labor;
• ​At least one company stopped trading in Uzbek cotton after the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) ruled such trade violates OECD Guidelines;
• Socially responsible investors (SRIs) have blacklisted companies that knowingly sell and use Uzbek cotton.

With your support we can end forced labor!

• Demand the Uzbek and Turkmen governments stop using forced labor.
• Urge apparel companies to use cotton free of forced labor.
• Urge companies operating in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to refuse complicity.
• Follow Us: www.cottoncampaign.org, @CottonCampaign, Facebook
• Sign petitions to support front-line activists like Gaspar Matalaev

The [school] director himself comes into the classes and says ‘the government educates you for free, gives you books for free. If you don’t harvest cotton we’ll take away your books and you’ll have to buy them yourselves to study.’

Seventh-grade pupil, Kashkadarya region

Together with our students we were in the fields 45 days. We, and especially young teachers like me, picked cotton without rest and without breaks.

Teacher, Syrdarya region

No one refuses the harvest. Back in our first year [in university] they warned us about that. If a student doesn’t go to the harvest he will get expelled from university.

University student, Tashkent region