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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 [...]
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?
Analysis: forced child labor a symptom of deep structural problems in agriculture
Deutsche Welle Russian service features a snapshot of current conditions and analysis of Uzbekistan’s forced child labor in cotton by Uzbek sociologist Alisher Ilkhamov. Key point:
…forced child labor is itself a symptom of deep structural problems in agriculture. Amongthe primary ones is the strict centralization of the cotton sector in Uzbekistan, nearly to the same [...]
AFT and other groups protest: Uzbek child labor has got to go
October 14 AFT protest: Uzbek kids belong in school
Farmers 2009: set us free and we won’t need children
The Institute for War and Peace Reporting has produced some of the most insightful discussions on this subject since 2004, exposing the reasons behind forced child labor on cotton. Their latest chronicle of the start of the 2009 harvest is based on interviews with several farmers who candidly discuss why they go along [...]
Eight of twelve provinces reporting so far: Tashkent region
Fergana.ru has posted a remarkable photo essay from the Iangiiul area cotton fields.
Read the article in English here.
It makes for sad reading, with twelve year olds afraid to speak to reporters in the fields due to their teachers and police nearby. Trying to pitch in alongside, the reporters left coughing [...]
New form of child labor on cotton: cultivating seedlings
Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe’s Uzbek service (Radio Ozodlik) reported a week or so ago that schoolchildren in some areas of the Fergana Valley were being sent home with paper cones and seeds and told to grow 200 seedlings in their gardens for cotton farmers to plant later in the season. Just a homework assignment, [...]
Children of cotton III: the parents
The Children of Cotton II
Uzbek activists provide new evidence: stunning footage
The France-based group of Uzbek exiles headed by Nadezhda Ataeva has brought out a three-part wrenching visual account of the cost that cotton wreaks on Uzbek families.
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