UN Committee Against Torture Calls on Uzbek Government to End Forced Labor

The United Nations Committee Against Torture highlighted forced labor and child labor among the “principal subjects of concern” in its review of the government of Uzbekistan’s application of international conventions on torture.

The Committee conducted its fourth periodic review of Uzbekistan in October and issued its conclusions and recommendations in November 14, excerpted here:

“Forced labor and child labor

22. The Committee welcomes the information that young children up to ninth grade are no longer systematically involved in work in the cotton sector, but is concerned of the reports that between 500.000 and a million and a half adults and high school student, aged 15 to 17 continue to be mobilised to pick cotton for up to two months each autumn and that that they live in substandard conditions, without access to safe drinking water (arts. 2 and 16).

The Committee recommends that the State party should end the practice of using forced labor of adults and children in the cotton sector, and permit international and independent national nongovernmental organizations and activists to conduct regular independent monitoring.”

Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment requires all states that ratify it to outlaw torture. The Uzbek government ratified the CAT in 1995. The UN Committee Against Torture report on Uzbekistan is available here.