Uzbek Children, Fall 2010, Uzbek German Forum for Human Rights

The US Embassy in Tashkent described Uzbek students’ annual sojourn to the cotton fields as a rite of passage and a fun social occasion where they play guitars and eat trail mix, discounting reports of NGOs about coerced labour and poor conditions. A Bangladeshi UNICEF official was concerned about the impact Western retailers’ boycott of Uzbek cotton over forced child labour was having on his homeland’s economy, where traders source cotton from Uzbekistan.

For various reasons, both the Guardian and the activist organization Wikileaks have released the remainder of the collection of more than 250,000 cables, including several hundred previously unpublished dispatches datelined Tashkent from the period 2007-2009.

Interestingly, the Embassy cites the state-controlled Uzbek Trade Union’s figure of 1.64 million school-age children involved in agricultural work, including cotton-picking. The report also acknowledged that the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey conducted in 2006 by UNICEF was flawed because it was not conducted during the cotton harvest season.

Yet the US seemed determined to reject the reports of local and international NGOs about exploitation of children, and preferred to get the story from the staff of international organizations on the ground in Uzbekistan — themselves sometimes compromised by their need to keep constructive relations with the Uzbek government in order to to maintain their very presence in this oppressive country.

According to a cable dated February 8, 2008, Mahbub Sharif, a Bangladeshi national who was then head of UNICEF in Tashkent said that when the Uzbek government was concerned about foreign criticism and asked for advice in how to handle the issue, he said “increased transparency on the child labour situation could help ease international pressure.” But he then claimed that child labour in Uzbekistan was “not much different than in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh” and “reflects pressures by families rather than the government.“ In fact, Uzbekistan’s profile is different than South Asian due to the state quota system — a factor Sharif is shown as acknowledging in other cables. Sharif suggested that the Uzbek government develop an action plan to ensure employment of school-aged children was in compliance with international standards.

The Embassy was impressed that “the Uzbeks have broached the issue at all with UNICEF and the International Labor Organization” (ILO) and felt this reflected “genuine concern” about the potential economic concern of boycotts ; the cable author added that “in our field observations the use of pre-teens such as depicted in last October’s BBC document is much more the exception than the rule.”

Other cables address claims by both the Uzbek government and foreign experts that Uzbekistan was moving away from cotton to other crops. The US relays the argument from officials of the Uzbek Ministry of Education that while school-children *did* in fact spend “several weeks” picking cotton, they ultimately had “as many classroom hours as students in the United States” due to six-day school weeks and fewer vacations. Even so, the dispatch writer said various sources had indicated that children worked from one to six weeks in the fields, and noted the reluctance of Uzbek officials to share child labour statistics.

In 2009, after five months of talks, UNICEF finally concluded an agreement with the government of Uzbekistan to work on a national action plan; according to a cable from April 9, 2009, UNICEF representative Sharif then counseled that boycotts would “derail further progress.” He was told the Uzbek government was “now considering” inviting an ILO representative and would meet one in Moscow if invited. (Tashkent has not invited the ILO to Uzbekistan to this day.)

Sharif continued to theorize with Uzbek officials about ways to reduce the exploitation of children — perhaps through greater mechanization. When it was explained that machinery damaged cotton and lowered its value, he suggested finding stronger strains of cotton to grow. The Uzbek government did not seem serious about changing anything regarding child labour, yet the UNICEF official continued to urge engagement. At a round table with international agencies and foreign embassies, the US cable author reported that “while UNICEF representatives allowed that the threat of an international boycott of Uzbek cotton might have encouraged the government to adopt legal reforms, they believed that such threats have outlived their usefulness.”

In a subsequent meeting reported by the post on October 8, 2008, Sharif was quoted as saying “the boycott was already negatively impacting textile producers in his home country” and that those supporting the boycott had to realize it affected more than just Uzbekistan

Despite NGO findings of coercion and intimidation, in a cable dated January 9, 2009, the Embassy still continued to report its belief that child labour was not forced, prefering to use the term “mobilized” versus “forced labour” and that school-children’s cotton picking was “an ingrained part of the local culture” and was an “exhausting rite of passage.”

Many students look forward to the annual mobilization to pack their guitars, trail mix-equivalent snacks, vodka (for university students), and head out to the farms. The work can be exhausting, but they make the best of it. Students sometimes have campfires and enjoy evening entertainment, which provide opportunities to mingle with members of the opposite sex more freely than at home.

Both the US Embassy and UNICEF have new representatives in Tashkent now — perhaps they can make up for their predecessors’ minimizing of the documented phenomenon of forced child labour. UNICEF conceded the problem in a presentation last year about a joint mitigation program with the Uzbek government to try to send older students to the fields, and later in the school year.

This article first appeared on Choihona at EurasiaNet.org.

Thinking about 2009, it might be possible to conclude simply “more of the same.”  But what stands out is how successful the Uzbek government’s strategy has been, of stepping up repression at home, and obfuscation abroad.

Despite clear evidence of abusive practices, they seem to have sold their entire harvest, quite a bit of which ends up in clothes sold in the West.  From the report:

In October 2009, just as hundreds of thousands of children and adults were compelled by the State to hand pick cotton, the Uzbek Government announced contracts to sell 1 million tonnes of cotton to buyers mainly from Bangladesh, Iran, China, South Korea, Moldova, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey and Japan76. Bangladesh is the destination of a large proportion of Uzbekistan’s raw cotton: the ready-made garment industry manufactures it into clothes, of which 61% are exported to the European Union77. There is therefore a good chance that a proportion of the cotton in goods where the country of origin is unknown, is from Uzbekistan.

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 underemployment that of migrating for seasonal manual labor to Russia.  But in the downturn, thousands of those migrants have been forced to return home…or forced into criminal activity.

Maybe five years ago, traders could claim ignorance about Uzbekistan’s mass child enslavement for the cotton harvest.  Not anymore.  Multiple actors have approached the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre with the evidence directly, at least from 2008.  In July of this year the American Apparel and Footwear Association, in league with the (U.S.) National Retail Federation and two other major trade groups, wrote to the DMCC director, David Rutledge, and requested action.  The DMCC, after all, is a critical actor enabling the Uzbek government to profit from it exploitive practices.  And what action was taken?  A big roll-out of new services at the Tashkent Cotton Fair, and more cotton purchases:  the DMCC traded 20,000 tons by October and placed an order for 70,000 more! (Dr. Rutledge has since been replaced by the former head of the Dubai Gold Exchange, Malcolm Wall Morris.)

As the cotton works its way up the production chain, consumers are sending the message to retailers (and many retailers are reacting…and those that are not are being called on it).  But the first-line facilitators of this outrage such as the DMCC have an obligation to act, too.

UNICEF issued a glossy report on the state of the world’s children taking just that stance (much progress, so far to go).  Uzbekistan, where UNICEF takes an extreme softly-softly approach (so softly they don’t publicly discuss Uzbekistan’s policy of forced child labor anywhere), was not mentioned.  As the anniversary dawned, we learned from a caller to the Uzbek service of Radio Liberty (Radio Ozodlik) that high schoolers are still living in unheated buildings, forced to pick the last unopened cotton bolls as the temperature at night dips below freezing.  Article 32 of the Convention, meanwhile, states that:

States parties recognize the right of children to be free from economic exploitation, and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.

Uzbekistan’s children, it seems, don’t have much to celebrate this anniversary.

Fergana.ru published the list (see it reproduced below) of those attending the conference. It is an interesting document for many reasons, a few of which are highlighted here:

• First, it gives manufacturers and retailers some hard data to aid the process of tracing potential Uzbek cotton in their supply chains, a process which is ongoing;
• Secondly, it underlines the degree to which large Western commodities firms (Paul Reinhart, Louis Dreyfus, Cargill among others) continue to feel immune from any kind of shame in profiting from the misery and exploitation of children, four years after the International Crisis Group brought it to their direct attention, and in the face of a mountain of evidence in the intervening years.  Among the newer intermediaries, the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre was well represented, too.  Last year it was reported to have sold 200,000 tons of Uzbek cotton, a fairly big chunk of the harvest;
• Thirdly, it sheds a tiny sliver of light on the actors who may be financing/insuring these transactions, and therefore also partaking in the wealth created by child exploitation.  AIG Insurance and the Royal Bank of Scotland should explain their presence at the fair in this regard;
• Lastly, it indicates the increasingly heavy presence of spinners and textile manufacturers, especially from Turkey, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who may be obtaining the cotton directly.

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• 45-50% of the cotton is harvested by children;
• Though the government announced the harvest completed in early November, many children are still being forced to work in the fields picking the last remnants;
• Officials are withholding 60% of already miserly wages from the children for the “rent” of their schoolbooks–so instead of 5 US cents per kilogram picked, they may get 2.  For high school and college students who are forced to board near the fields or in them, the percent withheld is even higher to cover the cost of their food (more on this later);
• Children down to the third grade have been mobilized (those are 8 and 9 year olds);
• Teachers and other officials encountered by the researchers are taking more pains to try to convince observers that the process is “voluntary,” perhaps indicating a greater degree of surveillance and official pressure than in years past.

Little children loading what they've picked

This is the question posed earlier this month by the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia.  That group’s press release of November 4 broke the stories of deaths and injuries suffered earlier in the harvest.  More than just breaking news, the group points out the total complicity of institutions that, in a non-totalitarian society might be expected to protest this mass enslavement, or at least offer some support to the victims, namely, trade unions and healthcare organizations.  Read the full release after the break.

Association for Human Rights in Central Asia

Centre MBE 140, 16, rue de Docteur Leroy, 72000 LE MANS  FRANCE

Tel.: +33 6 13 41 40 70;   E-Mail: asiecentrale@ neuf.fr

November 4, 2009

Uzbekistan’s 2009 cotton harvest is in, but at what price?

The country’s top leadership has issued the list of the leading cotton producing districts in this year’s harvest.  Among them are the Gurlen district of Khorezm province and the Ellikkalin district of the Karakalpakstan autonomous republic.  See below for a selection of the evidence of forced labor in these and other districts, as well as information on cases of illness and even death resulting from the state’s poor organization of harvest labor.

October 2009

Three hundred fifty medical workers split into six groups took part in harvesting cotton in Khorezm’s Iangibazar district.  They were charged with picking a quota of 60 kg per day, totaling over 15 tons daily.  One hundred fifty of the medical workers from the Iangibazar district central hospital were assigned to one Iangibazar farm alone; they were under obligation to gather 120 tons of cotton.  During the course of their work there were cases of fevers and intensified chronic illnesses among the rural residents picking cotton in the same fields.  That segment of the population generally does not have money to purchase medications or to see doctors, which aids in spreading colds and other viruses throughout the villages.  At the same time, since medical personnel are distracted from their primary occupation in the fall [when they are out picking cotton], the level of care provided for infectious disease patients is lowered.

* * *

On October 13, an employee of the Khorezm Oncological Center, G.U. (name withheld to protect the victim’s privacy), born in 1982, was beaten, robbed and raped on her way home from picking cotton in the Urgench district.  At 7 pm she was walking home in an unpopulated area along the highway when she was attacked by an unknown man, 25 kilometers from the center of Urgench.  She was hospitalized in critical condition.

Usually G.U.’s husband walked her home from work but could not that day.  After this incident her husband’s family cut off any contact with G.U.  In rural Uzbekistan due to particular cultural and religious traditions and the prevailing popular mentality, the victim is usually blamed in these circumstances, which only intensifies her trauma. Her husband had previously requested that her employer, the Oncological Center, exempt her from picking cotton, but the head doctor (Svetlana Ibragimova Palvanova) refused, citing the need to fulfill the district governor’s instructions to mobilize all workers to bring in the cotton.

The local police detained the [alleged] attacker shortly thereafter, and are currently investigating the crime.

The victim continues to experience traumatic effects, the future impact of which it is difficult to predict.  Nevertheless, G.U. is not planning to sue her employer who failed to provide safe conditions during the work day.  Labor law requires that employers must supply workers with transportation if those workers are required to carry out tasks that require supplemental transport to different worksites. However in Uzbekistan very few workers are aware of their rights set out in collective bargaining agreements or even in national legislation.  There is a high level of unemployment in the country and so many citizens withstand unbelievable humiliation just to preserve their jobs.  Enterprise directors prefer to follow the unwritten directives of their higher ups, experience shows, for the very same reason—to preserve their own jobs, which confer status in society and material benefits.

The management of the Khorezm oncological center is doing its utmost to prevent the discovery of any written orders to the victim regarding the cotton harvest.  It seems, therefore, that no one is planning to compensate the victim for her physical and moral suffering…?

* * *

A cotton-harvest related automobile crash in the Urgench district of Khorezm province on October 26 took the life of a 28 year old doctor.  A bus carrying employees of the Urgench central district hospital was returning from the cotton fields when it was struck in the side by a wagon carrying cotton which had uncoupled from its tractor on a poor stretch of road.  In addition to the doctor, two hospital employees were hospitalized in critical condition and two other bus passengers were injured.

* * *

The Association for Human Rights in Central Asia has concluded that the organizers of this year’s cotton harvest were not able to provide workers with free choice of employment or with fair conditions of employment, as laid out in article 37 of the Constitution of Uzbekistan.

The Republic of Uzbekistan Labor Code, which came into force on April 1 1996 contains more than thirty articles directly related to worker protection.  For example, article 241 forbids persons younger than 18 years of age from engaging in work that is harmful to health.  This national norm applies not only to those up to the age of 15 (as specified in the law On Guarantees of the Rights of Children), but covers fully all persons up to age 18.

The last list of territories where work conditions are pronounced harmful to health was promulgated by the government in 1996; the lack of a current list prevents persons living and working in those zones from receiving state benefit payments.

Labor unions in the country are completely inactive, playing very little role in relations between employees and workers.  It is noteworthy that the chairman of the Federation of Labor Unions of Uzbekistan serves at the same time as a member of the government.  This crudely violates the fundamental principles of labor union organizing, the independence of unions from the executive branch of government, from local government, and other social and political groups.  It is for this reason that the Uzbekistan federation is still not accepted as a member of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

* * *

Members of the Association have documented photographically the use of forced child labor in those regions praised as “first rate” cotton producers by the government, including the Gurlen district of Khorezm province.  In the Ellikalin district of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, young people worked in fields sprayed with toxic chemicals, and as a result, many of them contracted intestinal illnesses.  Medical offices have refused either to register those illnesses ro to document their likely cause.

According to Abdusalom Ergashev, a human rights defender from Ferghana city, today on Nov. 16 hearings on a criminal case against Ganikhon Mamatkhanov, a human rights activist, shall begin in Akhunbabaev district court on criminal cases (Ferghana district). On October 10^th 2009 Ganikhon Mamatkhonov, a human rights defender from Ferghana region, was arrested by Ferghana city public procurator’s office under the charges of money extortion. Mr.Mamatkhonov alleges that a local farmer who has been cooperating with the local law enforcement officers planted 500.000 Uzbek sums (approximately $ 350 USD) to Mr. Mamatkhonov’s pocket when the latter was talking to him. Mr. Mamatkhonov then immediately arrested by the officers of the public procurator’s office who were waiting nearby. Mr. Mamatkhonov and his colleagues think that the authorities want to prosecute the outspoken human rights activist who used to openly speak about human rights violations.