Uzbek Girl 2011. Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights

Organizations working in the campaign against forced child labour have estimated the number of children working in the cotton fields to be from 1.5 million to 2 million. These estimates were made on the basis of extrapolation of numbers based on surveys of limited areas. Recently, two new sources became available which help confirm these figures and indicate in fact the number may be higher.

Uzbekistan is a closed society with an authoritarian regime where independent local and international monitors are heavily discouraged, and the media is not free to report critically without reprisals. Uzbekistan has not permitted the International Labour Organisation to enter the country and monitor the cotton harvest to determine the ages of people working and the conditions of their work.

Therefore, past estimates have had to rely on studies of some provinces and extrapolation from available known data

The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London has published studies of the use of children in the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan for a number of years. The latest study was based on past reports that were updated in 2010. Based on a survey of some areas, SOAS was able to estimate the number of children used in the cotton harvest:

Based on the survey of six districts, and extrapolating on the basis of further evidence, the conclusion was that ‘[p]ractically all school children between the ages of 10 and 15 years old (from 5th to 9th grades) in rural areas and small towns (district centres) were being recruited for the cotton harvest’ (SOAS, 2009: 19). This equates to about 2.4 million children in the 5th–9th grades and means that children picked an estimated 40–50% of the total cotton harvest.

In August of this year, a number of cables alleged to have been obtained from diplomatic sources by the activist group WikiLeaks were published. The release of these cables began in November 2010 and have continued throughout the year, culminating in the largest batch. Among these cables are numerous reports from the US embassy on its meetings with Uzbek officials and representatives of UNICEF regarding the issue of forced child labor.

In a cable dated June 6, 2008, the US Embassy in Tashkent quoted the figure supplied by the state-controlled trade union:

According to a knowledgeable source, the Trade Union of Uzbekistan (a quasi-governmental organization) estimated in 2008 that 1.64 million school-age children were involved in agricultural work, including cotton picking, representing 45 percent of the total number of Uzbek schoolchildren in grades 5 to 11.

Since most of the agricultural work performed by school-children in Uzbekistan relates to the cotton industry, it is safe to say that the 1.64 million children referenced here are involved in cotton-picking.

This cable also mentions non-governmental groups inside the country who have estimated that anywhere from several hundred thousands to 2 million children could be involved in harvesting cotton. In defense of argumentation that there are less children employed than previously, the cable notes the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey performed by UNICEF, a study that was later acknowledged by UNICEF to be flawed. The cable author as well notes that the survey was conducted in March and May 2006, and thus did not capture the use of children during the fall cotton harvest period from September through November.

Although this cable conceded both the NGO estimates of one million and even referenced the official trade union figure of 1.64, in a subsequent cable, a US diplomat contradicted the Embassy’s own previous assessments and claimed that NGO figures were not reliable.

NGOs have continued to press for the entry of the ILO into Uzbekistan, and to gather information about forced labor.

This season, there was a breakthrough when monitors inside Uzbekistan were able to get a hold of a document that indirectly confirms the numbers of children mobilized in one region.

The Paris-based group Association Droits de l’Homme en Asie Centrale (the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia, AHRCA) recently was able to obtain an official government document that indicates plans by the authorities to send as many as 170,000 school-children to pick cotton in the Khorezm region.

The document — an official press release — is said to demonstrate the wide-scale involvement of the state bureaucracy in both coercing children and adults to pick cotton, and punishing them if they fail to obey orders.

The press-release, prepared by the Khorezm region Interior Ministry, stated:

In order to have a quality harvest, in the 2011 harvest, we will have a short time frame to mobilize cotton-pickers, a total of 202,641 people, including 34,800 students from colleges, and high schools. 463 temporary residences (302 field barracks), 109 civilian housing units, 52 tents, etc., have been prepared for their accommodation

This type of press release is typically distributed among local mass media and to the participants of staff meetings held nearly every evening during the cotton season at the offices of provincial and district authorities.

As AHRCA points out, if the authorities have given the total of 202,641 in their province, and the 34,800 college students are subtracted from that figure, the remainder is 167,841 people — and these are likely to be even younger students.

(In Uzbekistan, where children attend school for 10 years, “college” means a high-school level vocational school or academy for older teens).

While there is only an indirect indication that this figure of nearly 170,000 is a reference to school-age children, it’s very likely that for the purposes of planning, this is what is intended, since officials would know the exact number of students enrolled. If the reference was to day laborers, for example, the figure could only be approximate as the large number of labor migrants abroad and the numbers of those returning to Uzbekistan are fluid. If the reference was to teachers or other state employees, they would have been mentioned as a category of people.

Based on the figure of 170,000 out of the population of Khorezm, which constitutes 6% of all 13 cotton-producing regions of Uzbekistan, the likely number of schoolchildren mobilized to pick cotton throughout the country is then estimated at 2,797,350 persons, or at the very least, 2.5 million people.

The document also outlines the coercive nature of the cotton industry:

The subjects of this forced labor are not only schoolchildren and students, but the farmers themselves. Criminal proceedings are brought against those who plant anything other than cotton in their fields, such as more profitable crops, or those who allow livestock to graze in their fields. Two typical details from the press release of the Ministry of Internal Affairs:

1) “As a result of measures taken by law enforcement bodies, we have identified 230 cases of rice cultivation without permission, and among them 222 cases at farms and 8 cases of partial allotments, a total of 941 hectares…According to these facts, materials were prepared and brought to the courts to take action in accordance with the law.”

2) “…On June 2, 2011 in the village of Boshkirshik, Yangibazar district, in the cotton field at the Istikbol Farm owned by Atadjanov Saparboy (date of birth: 09/30/1956), a cow trampled 293 cotton bushes on a 95.4 square kilometer area.”

For this “offense,” the farmer’s cow was confiscated, slaughtered, and the meat was turned over to other agencies.

“This document demonstrates that the government of Uzbekistan does not intend to change anything in the command economy established in the cotton industry, with its usual practice of mass forced labor of workers sent to pick cotton each autumn,” says AHRCA.

“In our view, the only way to persuade the Uzbek government to stop the Stalinist practice of forced labor is to conduct a boycott of its cotton and textiles,” says AHRCA.

AHRCA has called upon the European Parliament to reject pending legislation that would give preferential tariffs for Uzbek textiles exported to Europe and to abolish the Generalized System of Preferences for Uzbek cotton and textiles.

Uzbek children, 2011. Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights

Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the Prime Minister of Uzbekistan, met with regional representatives on June 19 and threatened to punish local administrators if their farmers didn’t achieve cotton production targets for the year, uznews.net reported.

This is exactly the kind of threatening statement Mirziyoyev has made in the past, creating a coercive climate where farmers and local governments in charge of meeting quotas felt they had no choice but to press school-children into service.

The independent Uzbek news site uznews.net interviewed a source who requested anonymity that described the meetings held with ministers, regional, district and town government, heads of regional interior ministries or police, prosecutors, and business and organization leaders.

Mirziyoyev pointed out that several districts and regions were in danger of producing below their grain targets this year. He asked the country’s chief prosecutor to identify and punish those responsible.

Almost all the law-enforcement agencies represented at the meeting had drawn up lists of hundreds of farmers across the country “guilty” of below target grain production. The degree to which each was responsible for this will be set out in individual assessments.

Two districts were singled out for reprimands:  Kasan District in Kashkadarya Region and the Kasansaisk district of Namangansk Region, which failed to meet the state plan for the year, uznews.net reported. Reports of forced child labour were received from a number of districts of Kashkadarya last year.

With prices rising to $2.00/lb. for cotton on world markets, Uzbekistan will feel even more under pressure to produce a higher yield. The prime minister urged that quotas be met by the onset of autumn.

Farmers are not expected to benefit from these higher prices, however. One farmer told uznews.net that the price fetched for one ton of cotton was only 600,000 soums, or $348 at the official exchange rate and $241.90 at the black-market rate).

On June 2, the Council of Federations of Unions of Uzbekistan and the Association of Farms, both state-controlled organizations, and the Uzbek Ministry of Labor and Social Protection issued a joint statement on the site of Jahon, the Foreign Ministry’s information agency.

The statement cited various laws on child protection and made the claim that “large-scale socio-economic reforms in the country” since independence have removed the social rationale for the use of forced child labor — the implication is that privatization of farms since the end of the Soviet collective farm era has eliminated the need to put children to work.

Instead, say the state-controlled organizations, allegations of child exploitation in Uzbekistan are the fault of  “certain biased foreign companies, organizations and media” who are all putting out “false insinuations and fabrications” about child labour because they want to “ruin Uzbekistan’s high rating for its agricultural production, above all cotton, in the external market.”

In a reprise of the old Soviet “hostile encirclement” argument that explains away criticism by foreign “wreckers and saboteurs,” the state-controlled bodies said that critics of child labor weren’t really concerned about children’s rights, but merely intent on “slowing down Uzbekistan’s economic growth and successful social reforms.”

The statement claimed that only children 15 years and old were recruited for work in the cotton fields, and only outside of school hours.

In an admonition we hope some parents, teachers and children might be able to wave in the faces of local administrators who have been known to threaten them, the statement said:

(6) Any form of coercion of children to labor on the part of any person, including threat of application of sanctions with regarding to the children themselves of their parents is not allowed and is punishable under the law of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

The statement also said there would be public oversight of the use of forced labor by the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, and that special joint working groups had been set up by the Association of Farms and the Council of Federations of Trade Unions to monitor the situation.

While formally, these Uzbek bodies are supporting the calls of international trade unions and human rights groups, they are making false claims about the  ostensible removal of the motivation for exploitation of child labor, and their statement has to be seen in that light, says fergananews.com. Independent experts who monitor the cotton harvest have found that each year, school-age children are forced to work along with state employees and other citizens.

Umida Niyazova

In a recent interview with cottoncampaign.org, she shared her reflections on the past harvest in the fall of 2010, and what we might expect this year.

1. What are the main lessons learned from the cotton harvest 2010 that we should take into account for 2011 regarding strategy?

I wouldn’t say that there was something especially different in the cotton campaign of 2010 that distinguished it from previous years. The method for mobilizing school children and college students to harvest the cotton remained unchanged. In 2010, on the average, the school children and college students were sent to the fields in mid-September until mid-October (in some provinces, until the end of October). They spent about two or two-and-a-half months in the fields.

What I could note, however, is that with each passing year, it is becoming more and more difficult to conduct research, because the authorities want to employ all their efforts to conceal information. For example, school children are forced to work in fields which are located further away from the main highways, so that they are not visible. Teachers are warned to report any strangers who show up at the fields.

In general, in devising a strategy against child labor in Uzbekistan, you likely have to take into account that the people who gain an enormous person profit from cotton are in fact high-ranking officials, who could change the situation very quickly — but only if they really wanted to do so. These officials have their own strategy. They are masters of bluffing and can easily deny what is obvious without batting an eye. They can go through all the ritualistic activities possible that would seemingly change the situation. That means passing various laws in parliament, or presidential decrees, or instructions from the government, or the passing of a special “yearly plan” to eradicate child labor; they can create a commission to monitor these laws and can ratify the ILO conventions. They can do this endlessly. On the surface, it seems as if there are some sort of positive actions being taken, but in fact, we’re running in place.

2. Will the harvest be shorter or longer this year?

In 2010 (by contrast to 2009), the harvest period was shorter. (In 2009, it lasted until December.) This is most likely due to the fact that from the very beginning, there was an imperative to harvest the cotton as quickly as possible, before the rains came. And it is also related, I think, to the increasing attention from the press and human rights organizations to the problem of child labor.

3. What effect will the huge raise in prices have on developments in forced child labor?

The sharp increase in the price of cotton has already had an effect on farmers this year. From all indications, the authorities are trying to extract the last drop of resources out of the farmers’ holdings, so that they can get as much cotton as possible. According to reports coming in, local government officials are forcing farmers to plant cotton over their entire land, every bit that they have. That is, sometimes farmers have been allowed unofficially to plant vegetables or fruits on 5-10 percent of their leased land. From that, they can get a profit from sales. But judging from the situation today, farmers are being forced to plow all their lands for crops and plant
cotton.

It’s hard to expect that the situation could improve for forced cotton pickers. This concerns both adults and children who are most likely going to be forced to go out to the fields in mid-September.

4. Are children involved in weeding and the sowing of cotton in the spring?

In the spring, in some provinces, school-children must help with the cultivation of cotton. Sometimes they are sent to work after school; sometimes instead of school. But this does not occur on such a large scale as in the harvesting of cotton. There was a recent report on this on uznews.net.

5. Last year, human rights activists reported more police and army guarding the fields and preventing observers. Will this likely repeat?

I am certain that this year there will be the same kind of control (if not more) over the cotton fields. The government in Uzbekistan understands the power of information; therefore it has closed the offices or bureaus of all independent international media, all the foreign human rights NGOs; the Human Rights Watch office was closed just recently.

“No information — no problem” — that’s the motto of the current Uzbek government. Therefore, naturally, the authorities will do the maximum to make it difficult to access the cotton fields and document the situation.

6. The government has formed a new working group supposedly to monitor labor conditions. Will this group function? Will it travel to the cotton fields?

So far, the concrete “work plan” of this monitoring group has not been announced. But as I noted above, this is no more than the latest ritual games. I do not think that it is worth ascribing any meaning to a monitoring group that consists of officials from ministries, and which does not have a single independent person in it whose words could be trusted.

7. Have you heard any indication that the Uzbek government will permit the ILO to monitor conditions in the cotton industry in Uzbekistan?

As far as is known, Uzbekistan will not let the ILO group in this year.

Teenagers of 15 and 16 years of age were told they had to help do the weeding to help maximize this year’s crop, to come at a time of record highs of the price of cotton.

Cotton surged to $2/lb in February and has now fallen to a still-high rate of $1.45-$1.50/lb as farmers are expected to put more cropland under cotton.

Although Uzbekistan signed and ratified the International Labor Convention banning the worst forms of child labor, the practice of enlisting children into cotton fieldwork persists.

A local teacher told uznews.net that the children were prevented from studying for their exams by being forced to pick weeds. Says the Uzbek reporters:

Sources claim that Jizak Regional education department was involved in sending high school pupils to the cotton fields. The campaign is no surprise to many activists trying to end the Uzbek government’s reliance on forced child labor, to maximize its yields from cotton growing and exports each year.

Uzbekistan has not issued an invitation to the ILO to inspect farms during the cotton harvest.

President Karimov visits Surkhandarya region, April 2011

How much does President Islam Karimov know about the use of children in the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan?

Surely he must know a lot, because he is intimately connected to preparations for the cotton crop this year as in other years, and has become involved in every aspect of the industry personally, right down to the level of moisture in the soil and number of acres planted.

On April 22, President Karimov travelled to the Surkhandarya region to meet with local officials and farmers and hear about the issues for cotton this year. Surkhandyas is the most southern region of Uzbekistan, bordering Tajikistan in the north and east, and Afghanistan in the south.

The Uzbek leader started out with a visit to the Hakim Termizi memorial complex, urging young people to visit the holy place to enrich themselves spiritually for a “harmoniously developed personality” — that’s the theme of his state youth program this year.

Next, Karimov urged that more trees be planted — the region gets very hot in the summer.

According to the official web site gov.uz and andijan.uz, there are about 5,000 farms function in the region; the farm At-Termizi Namuna, for example, had a rich harvest: 32 centners of cotton and 70 centners of grain per hectare [a centner is 100 kilograms] — providing an income of 106.6 million soums and profit of 26 million soums [about $15,416]. Of course, farmers have to sell their cotton at the state’s fixed prices.

The president asked specific questions about how cotton would be developed this year, said the government report.  This year, because of unfavorable weather, “special attention has been paid to feeding the soil with fertilizers. As a result, conditions for a large crop have been created. Surkhandarya farmers have also managed to ensure good cotton growth on 119,600 hectares,” said the report. With cotton prices at a record high and continuing to shoot up, obviously the state is interested in making more revenue.

Last year, farmers were trying to reduce moisture in the soil, but this year they are trying to conserve it, says the report.

“In conversation with farmers, the head of the state stressed their role in ensuring the welfare of the people,” gov.uz reported. Karimov “emphasized that the state would continue to fully support the farmers.”

That’s where it got vague.

Nothing about ending the use of child labor in the harvest — and nothing about ensuring better wages and conditions.

“The President noted that the young people should live with understanding that they are heirs of great ancestors, they should mobilize all of their knowledge, talent and aspirations for further increasing the authority of their Motherland,” the official report of the president’s tour concluded. Did the subject of child labor come up? The president is in a position to convey the obligations Uzbekistan has undertaken with passing laws against the worst forms of child labor, in compliance with the International Labor Organization conventions.

Instead, the president was preoccupied with a propagandistic event being staged now as part of his “Harmoniously Developed Generation” campaign, a sports competition that has unleashed a frenzy of building and preparations in Termez — also the site of a German base used to help supply the war in Afghanistan. According to the independent news service uznews.net, in 2008, the state forced teachers to work for free on the event and schools had to pony up $1500 in scarce funds for the program. Reports indicated this year, too, that young people were dragooned into athletic activities that they don’t really want to be involved in.

Surkhandarya region, 2010

In 2009 and 2010, there were reports received of the use of child labour in Surkhandarya region — and it’s likely it can be expected again this year, given the official silence on the subject. According to fergananews.com:

Some 600 out of 840 schools in Surkhandarya region of Uzbekistan stopped classes for the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades in order to send students to pick cotton, the Ezgulik Human Rights Society reported. About 90,000 students were told to “volunteer” to work at plantations in Surkhandarya, and it is not known when they will be allowed to return to school.

press-service.uz

On April 18, President Islam Karimov signed a decree titled “On Measures to Observe Legality in Reorganization and Optimization of the Sizes of Land Parcels of Farmers’ Associations.”

This presidential measure translates into further empowerment for local administrative officials to seize farmers’ land through the courts, the semi-official Uzbek news site uzmetronom.com reports.

The decree outlines the reasons that would justify seizure of a farmer’s parcel, in order to transfer the land to new leasees. These include:

o not using the agricultural land for the stated purpose
o sowing of unauthorized crops not stipulated under the state contract
o failure to produce harvests at the minimum assessment level
o low profitability of the farm

According to local analysts, the decree is unquestionably intended to restrict the development of private farming, and essentially turns farmers’ property back into Soviet-style collective farms.

Farmers are forced to plant the crops that the state dictates, and if they are told to plant cotton, that’s what they must do.  If they plant high-yield melons or peanuts instead, or fail to produce the state quotas, they could lose their land.

The state’s purchase prices are notoriously low, and often don’t cover even the minimum production costs for the mandatory crops. Farmers trapped in the state quota system will not necessarily see any benefit from rising cotton prices.

By further institutionalizing the harsh controls of the state agricultural system, which maintains only a semblance of private farming, the Uzbek government is further entrenching the system that forces farmers to use low-cost child labor.

The price last week on the market in India, the world’s second largest producer, is $1.93 per pound — it’s been hovering around $2.00/lb. for some time and is expected to stay around this price.

Not since the Reconstruction era in the US has cotton fetched such a price on world markets, due to poor harvests, floods in Pakistan and China, and growing demand from China.

Manufacturers are concerned that they will have to pass on higher costs to consumers, and Nike has already raised the price of sneakers for 2012.

What does this mean for school-children forced to work in the fields in Uzbekistan? It certainly doesn’t mean they will be paid higher wages.  Although there is nominally a private farming system, the market in Uzbekistan is not really free — sale prices are state-controlled and farmers are assigned quotas they must meet or face severe reprisals like the loss of their land leases.

As we saw from the 2010 harvest when prices rose to $1/lb, the incentive to use children was greater precisely so that local and national officials could keep more of the profits. If farms could freely sell their output and set wages accordingly, they might be able to lure back adult migrant laborers who left Uzbekistan in search of a livelihood in nearby countries, and refrain from exploitation of children — after all, a stated government goal and obligation under the ILO conventions Uzbekistan signed in 2009. But the state assigns producers a price and controls agricultural supplies as well — and in some regions buses the school-children to the fields directly from school.

Children forced to bring in the cotton harvest earn the equivalent of 5 cents a kilo, or at most, $4-5/day, according to reports from the Uzbek German Forum for Human Rights. And they must pay for food and clothing out of those meager wages.

The government of Uzbekistan has made the false claim that groups campaigning for the boycott of Uzbek cotton are somehow stalking horses of Western governments and companies wishing to knock out their competition on the world market. That propagandistic argument will be far harder to make with surging prices. If anything, there is concern about shortages and some US corn farmers are thinking to turn to cotton crops.

Soon after Uzbek President Islam Karimov visited Brussels in January, the European Council approved a protocol granting various tariff and customs privileges and free access to European market for Uzbek textiles

Rights groups are protesting the move due to the use of forced child labor in the Uzbek cotton industry:

Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch (HRW) told IPS:

There are serious questions about how this could have come to happen. It may be a case of brazen cynicism or it may be an example of a very worrying lack of co- ordination within the EU.

Denber said she found it “mind-boggling” that even after the EU’s talks with Karimov, where concerns about child labor were expressed, the EU went ahead with textiles agreement.

HRW sent a letter to Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, outlining concerns about human rights violations in Uzbekistan, including the use of child labor to pick cotton.

Uzbekistan is the world’s third largest cottent dealer and sells about $1 billion in cotton in year, shipping about 850,000 tons, says IPS.

Jean-Paul Delmotte, UNICEF’s representative in Uzbekistan, told IPS that as many as one million children were mobilized, mainly 13-18 years in age, but some younger. With the high price of cotton in the last harvest — then $1/lb and now $2/lb — pressure was put on farmers to use child labor.

The European Council declined to comment when contacted by IPS.

Photo: Timur Rasul-Zade, Fergana.ru

Fergana.ru reports on Tajikistan’s gradual decrease in acreage planted under cotton in favor of orchards:

According to the chief agronomist of the Sogd provincial department of agriculture, Abduvohid Yarmatov, this year 16 thousand hectares of cotton were eliminated:  71 thousand hectares were planted under cotton before, and only 55 thousand are currently.  The main reason for the gradual move away from cotton is the fact that it’s unprofitable…

Falling cotton yields only compound Tajikistan’s cotton farmers’ cycle of indebtedness, to the state and to private banks.  Overall farm indebtedness exceeds half a billion dollars, and while the government has decreed part of it should be written off, the country is not close to solving the crisis.

Meanwhile, the shift to fruit cultures has obvious benefits:

If one hectare of cotton can produce crops worth up to 700 dollars, which requires 800 dollars to produce, then one hectare of grape vines will produce a harvest of 100 tons, when a kilogram of grapes at the market costs between one and five dollars.  The cost to produce the grapes and cotton are also incomparable.  Apricots, too, are similar…

Thankfully, in Tajikistan either some farmers seem to have the capacity to make these decisions on their own, or the state or debtholders are willing to allow them to make this change.  If this were only true in Uzbekistan, perhaps farmers would live better, rural communities would be more prosperous, and children would avoid being dragooned as cotton-pickers?

Read the whole article (in Russian) here: http://www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=6229