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Activist Urges Uzbek Officials to Comply with Anti-Forced Labour Law
Dmitry Tikhonov, a human rights defender in the city of Angren, has appealed to Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Azimov to stop breaking the law and end the exploitation of children in the cotton harvest, the independent website uznews.net reported.
“I addressed my demands to Rustam Azimov because he is personally responsible for overseeing the implementation of [...]
US Embassy, UNICEF Minimized Forced Child Labour, Argued Against Boycott
The new WikiLeaks dump of alleged diplomatic cables contains numerous dispatches from Tashkent with troubling new revelations about the downplaying of the issue of forced child labour in the cotton industry in Uzbekistan by both the US Embassy and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), apparently driven by the need to keep good relations with Uzbekistan.
The [...]
EU Opts to Keep Trade Preferences for Uzbekistan
Non-governmental campaigners against forced child labour in Uzbekistan have run up against some obstacles in getting the European Union on board to pressure Tashkent to stop this pernicious practice.
The European Commission has opted to maintain trade preferences for Uzbekistan under its Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, despite clear evidence of the use of forced child labour [...]
Coalition of Unions, Retailers, Human Rights Groups Appeal to Clinton on Failure to Downgrade Uzbekistan
A coalition of unions, retailers, labor and human rights groups have issued an open letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing concern at the failure to downgrade Uzbekistan to Tier 3 on the US Watchlist in the State Department’s report on Global Trafficking in Persons (G-TIP), released this week. The letter, signed by 18 [...]
Will Brussels Give Tashkent a Pass on Wide-Scale Child Abuse?
The European Union is mulling ways to expand its textile trade with Uzbekistan, a major cotton supplier. Rights activists are lobbying hard against the ratification of EU trade measures, asserting that adoption would encourage the continuing use of forced child labor in the Central Asian nation.
The European Council approved an amendment in February to the [...]
What You Can Do About Child Labour in Uzbekistan
Bama Athreya, President, GlobalWorks Foundation and Judy Gearhart, Executive Director, International Labor Rights Forum have co-authored an article on The Huffington Post, one of the most widely-read publications on the Internet.
Titled What We Can Do on World Day Against Child Labor (June 12) — and we could add — on any day — the article [...]
EU to Consider Forced Labor in Uzbekistan
Forced child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields will be the focus of a June 21 hearing at the European Parliament. The International Labor Rights Forum, an advocacy organization for workers’ rights, is calling for an international investigation by the International Labor Organization (ILO) into the use of child labor and has [...]
World Day Against Child Labor
Today is World Day Against Child Labor, and the International Labor Organization and supporters have organized events in more than 50 countries. They are making the day this year with a new report on children in hazardous work.
Human rights monitor Elena Urlayeva has been reporting from the cotton fields in Uzbekistan, where students have been [...]
Calls for International Investigation on Uzbek Child Labor
Labor and human rights groups at the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) conference this week called for an international investigation of forced child labor in Uzbekistan, the International Labor Rights Forum said in a statement on its website.
The investigation was called for at the ILO annual conference in Geneva by Anti-Slavery International and the International [...]
Employers and Unions at ILO Meeting Condemn Uzbek Child Labor
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) reported that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) “heard disturbing reports from both workers and employers in regards to millions of children forced into from school into hazardous work in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan,” according to a statement on the trade unions’ website.
Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the ITUC [...]
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REPORTS
Download 2010 SOAS Report What Has Changed
The production and export of cotton continues to be a major feature of the economy, politics and everyday lives of the people of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. This report analyses the nature and causes of their use of child labour in the cotton sector.