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Anti-Slavery International calls on H&M and Zara to cut out Uzbek cotton
See the group’s call to action here, and here.
World Bank in Uzbekistan: excusing child exploitation?
A modest proposal: if international organizations feel incapable of speaking out against Uzbekistan’s state-sponsored child exploitation (can’t damage that all-important mandate, can we?), at the very least they should be able to avoid promoting it. Can we agree?
Unfortunately this seems like too much to ask. The World Bank has decided to devote this year’s small [...]
Asian Development Bank: “We intend to expand cooperation with Uzbekistan.”
The thickest thread in the interlocking economic web that keeps child slavery in place is of course the international cotton purchasers that allow the regime to profit from exploitation. But international development banks have a not-insignificant role too, considering they provide loans for agricultural projects, technical assistance, and, critically, political cover for this appalling [...]
Slave Nation: new report from the Environmental Justice Foundation
Downloadable here, the latest documentation from the U.K.-based advocacy group should put to rest any government denials of children’s involvement in the 2009 harvest. Incidentally, upon feeling (ever so slightly) more pressure from European governments and international organizations, Uzbekistan’s government has recently felt it necessary to step up just such denials (more on this [...]
2010: Uzbekistan’s Year of the Harmoniously Developed Generation
You can’t make this stuff up, folks. President Karimov envisions 2010 as the year of the “Harmoniously Developed Generation,” and has signed a package of instructions to his government to bring this about. I wonder if harmonious development includes a few months hard labor in his cotton fields?
Gymboree’s empty promises
It’s interesting that Gymboree feels at least a tiny obligation to respond to the query I sent upon receiving word of its charitable leanings:
-Original Message–
From: cassandra_cavanaugh@yahoo.com
Date: 1/4/2010 4:34:58 PM
To: customer_service@gymboree.com
Subject: Fw: Happy New Year From Our Chairman & CEO [#144624]
Dear Mr. McCauley,
Support for a children’s hospital in no way excuses the misery your corporation is bringing to the [...]
Buying absolution? Charity to compensate for slavery
Gymboree is flaunting its charitable bona fides to customers, spreading news of its contributions to St. Judes Children’s Hospital. Never mind the Uzbek children crippled picking the cotton for its clothes have no access to plausible (or any) health care…
Matt McCauley just doesn’t seem to get it. More on that soon.
What you can do: email Gymboree, Fred’s and Abercrombie & Fitch
A select few retailers are getting closer to getting Uzbek cotton out of their supply chains. These include J. Crew, and Hanes, the t-shirt maker; some others don’t want to be named until they are further along in the process. But some corporations are just plain recalcitrant, including those named above.
When I go to buy [...]
LL Bean vows to exclude Uzbek cotton
Of all the companies named by the International Labor Rights Forum on this year’s Sweatshop Hall of Shame for the use of Uzbek cotton, LL Bean was the fastest to respond, and vowed to (eventually) exclude it from their supply chain. Let’s hope their follow through is as exhaustive as their initial response was rapid.
Read [...]
The cost of cotton: no future
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that Uzbek college students are regularly being expelled for refusing to pick cotton.
With that kind of a black mark in their past, any expelled student has little chance of ever completing higher education at home, which leaves the most likely option for survival in a country with mass un- and [...]
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