During the period of 17 to 22 September 2011, 6 teams consisting of 14 UNICEF staff members visited cotton fields in Fergana, Namangan, Andijan, Navoi, Bhukara, Khorezm, Karakalpakstan, Samarkand, Jizzak, Tashkent, Surkhandarya, and Kashkadarya regions. UNICEF’s observations regarding the use of children in the cotton fields were shared in the form of an update and a final report with the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. UNICEF continues to act and advocate at all levels of governance and society for the progressive elimination of child labour in cotton production.

The statement is couched in cautious terms so as not to actually make a formal finding and a condemnation about forced child labour.

Instead, UNICEF prefers to speak in positive terms about the “progressive elimination” of child labour.

While UNICEF quietly provides copies of its reports to the US and other governments, the report is not made available to the public.

Young girl picking cottin in Kashkadarya, October 2011

UNICEF representatives have been officially invited to Uzbekistan to conduct monitoring of reports of the use of child labor, Radio Ozodlik reported.

Jean-Michel Delmotte, the representative of UNICEF in Tashkent, confirmed that the proposal had come from the government of Uzbekistan, the Russian news agency Regnum reported. Delmotte said that the Uzbek authorities promised to give him comprehensive assistance in organizing monitoring of the problem of child labor.

Publications by WikiLeaks of alleged classified diplomatic cables from the US Embassy in Tashkent indicate that UNICEF repeatedly tried to minimize the scale of the problem of forced child labor in Uzbekistan and argued against a boycott, EurasiaNet reported.

UNICEF has not made any comment about the WikiLeaks revelations.

Meanwhile, this year, as in past years child labor in the cotton harvest has been documented by local monitors. The Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Activists of Uzbekistan reported that in Kashkadarya province, fifth-graders were taken to harvest the cotton.

“The daily quota is 80-100 kilos. For each harvested kilo, 150 soums (about 5 cents) is paid,” Surat Ikramov, head of the Initiative Group told Radio Ozodlik.

It is important to point out that while the Uzbek government decided to invite UNICEF to observe child labor, it has refused to invite an independent monitoring group from the International Labor Organization (ILO), however.

Uzbek authorities also continue to interfere with the monitoring of child labor by Uzbek human rights activists. In Koson district, two human rights activists from Kashkadarya were detained by police for monitoring the use of children in the cotton harvest.

In recent years, more than 60 Western companies have pledged not to buy Uzbek cotton in order to compel the government to cease the use of child labor, Responsible Sourcing Network reports. They include Wal-Mart, Marks & Spencer, the Gap, Tesco, Gymboree and others.

The Uzbek government continues to deny that children are forced to work in the harvest.

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.

The member states of the International Labour Organisation ILO meet at the International Labour Conference (ILC), held every year in Geneva, Switzerland, in the month of June. The ILC examines reports from the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations on various country situations and issues.

Each member State is represented by a delegation consisting of two government delegates, an employer delegate, a worker delegate, and their respective advisers. (Employer and Worker delegates are nominated in agreement with the most representative national organizations of employers and workers.)

The IL0 had requested the Uzbek government to supply full particulars to the conference in June 2011 on its conventions concerning child labour. For the past five years, none of the reports on unratified Conventions and Recommendations requested under article 19 of the Constitution have been received, and Uzbekistan also failed to answer a direct request for information on convention no. 154 and a direct request on convention no. 29. This led to Uzbekistan being “double footnoted” in the Committee of Experts’ report i.e. it has appeared under two footnotes in the Committee of Experts’ lengthy sections on Uzbekistan:

Uzbekistan
Serious failure to submit.

The Committee notes with serious concern that the Government has not communicated information on the submission to the competent authorities of the instruments adopted by the Conference during 15 sessions held between 1993 and 2010.

The Committee notes that Uzbekistan has been a Member of the Organization since 31 July 1992. It recalls that, under article 19 of the Constitution of the International Labour Organization, every Member undertakes to bring the instruments adopted by the International Labour Conference before the authority or authorities within whose competence the matter lies “for the enactment of legislation or other action”. The Governing Body of the International Labour Office has adopted a Memorandum concerning the obligation to submit Conventions and Recommendations to the competent authorities, asking for particulars about this subject. The Committee hopes that the Government will provide all the information requested by the questionnaire at the end of the Memorandum about the competent authority, the date on which the instruments were submitted and the proposals made by the Government on the measures which might be taken with regard to the instruments that have been submitted.

The Committee urges the Government, in the same way as the Conference Committee, to make every effort to comply with the constitutional obligation of submission and recalls that the Office can provide technical assistance to overcome this serious delay.

The Committee notes communications it received regarding the abolition of forced labour convention (No. 105), and communications received in 2008 and 2009 from the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which alleged that, despite the ratification of the ILO conventions by Uzbekistan, there were reports from non-governmental organizations and the media regarding systematic and persistent use of forced labour, including forced child labour, in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan. The IOE and the ITUC alleged that the Government systematically mobilized both school-aged children and adults to work in the annual cotton harvest for purposes of economic development.

WORKERS’ ORGANIZATIONS FILE COMPLAINTS OF FORCED LABOUR

The Committee then notes new communications received in November 2010 regarding forced labour in Uzbekistan from a number of workers’ organizations regarding allegations of forced labour by both adults and children: the European Apparel and Textile Confederation (EURATEX) and the European Trade Union Federation: Textiles, Clothing and Leather (ETUF: TCL); the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), the ETUF: TCL, the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) and the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT).

The ITUC alleged, in particular, that “local administration employees, teachers, factory workers and doctors were commonly forced to leave their jobs for weeks at a time and pick cotton with no additional compensation; in some instances refusal to cooperate could lead to dismissal from work; even elderly people and mothers of young babies had been reportedly ordered by local government officials to pick cotton or lose their pensions or child benefits.” The ITUC concluded that, “even if forced labour in the cotton fields was not the result of state policy, the Government still violated the Convention by failing to ensure its effective observance, since it systematically required persons to work in the cotton fields against their will, under the threat of a penalty and in extremely perilous conditions for the purposes of economic development.”

UN TREATY BODIES’ CONCERNS ABOUT FORCED CHILD LABOUR IN UZBEKISTAN

The ILO’s Committee then reiterated the findings of various UN treaty bodies; the Committee on the Rights of the Child raised the health concerns for children working in the field long hours with pesticides and insufficient drinking water and food; the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, in its concluding observations of January 26, 2010, also expressed its concern regarding the educational consequences of girls and boys working during the cotton harvest season, reinforcing the 2—6 conclusions of the UN Committee on Economical, Social and Cultural Rights expressing concerns about taking children from school.

The Committee reports also noted the ITUC’s accounts of confirming widespread mobilization of forced labour in 2009 in at least 12 of Uzbekistan’s 13 regions: Andijan, Bukhara, Jizzakh, Ferghana, Karakalpakstan, Kaskadrya, Khorezm, Navoi, Samarkand, Syrdarya, Surkhandarya and Tashkent. The ITUC communication rejected the idea that this recruitment was the result of family poverty, but said it was state-sponsored mobilization which benefits the government, which establishes and enforces production quotas and compels teachers to mobilize students. Uzbekistan responded with objections that its well-established educational system placed obstacles to mobilization of children and that this was a family custom on farms.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, in its concluding observations of January 26, 2010, also expressed its concern regarding the educational consequences of girls and boys working during the cotton harvest season.

UZBEK GOVERNMENT DENIES ALLEGATIONS; ILO COMMITTEE PERSISTS IN DEMANDS

The Uzbek government denied the allegations and said forced labour was punishable by both penal and administrative sanctions and that almost all the country’s cotton is “produced by private undertakings that that have no economic interest in employing additional labour.”

The Committee responded by asking the Government to state, in its next report, whether public sector workers and university students participate in the cotton harvest and, if so, how their work is organized and how prevention of forced labour is implemented.

The Committee made note of all of Uzbekistan’s legislative efforts and legal sanctions, yet noted the IOE’s assertion that, despite the legislative framework against forced labour, schoolchildren (estimates ranging from half a million to 1.5 million schoolchildren) are forced by the government to work in the national cotton harvest for up to three months each year.

The Committee drew attention in particular to the need to prosecute those found guilty of exploiting forced child labour and the absence of any reports on such prosecutions or effective monitoring mechanisms. “

In this regard, the Committee “requests the Government to take the necessary measures to ensure that thorough investigations and robust prosecutions of offenders are carried out and that sufficiently effective and dissuasive sanctions are imposed in practice.”

Uzbekistan has frequently tried to deflect concerns about its forced child labour practices with references to its proclaimed National Action Plan. But the Committee noted that “for the NPA on Convention No. 138 and Convention No. 182 to be credible and effective, forced child labour needs to be eradicated, and the monitoring of this phenomenon must be completely independent.”

As it does with UN treaty bodies, the Uzbek government snowed the ILO with reports of measures passed and seminars held and training sessions and inter-departmental commissions formed – all to create the semblance of activity on the issue of forced child labour. The Committee notes all of this, but still demands real implementation:

While noting the Government’s information on the numerous measures taken to monitor the involvement of schoolchildren in the cotton harvest, including measures taken within the framework of the NPA on Convention No. 138 and Convention No. 182, the Committee notes an absence of information from the Government on the concrete results of this monitoring, particularly information on the number of children, if any, detected by the labour inspectorate (or any other national monitoring mechanism) engaged to work in the cotton harvest. The Committee accordingly requests the Government to provide information on the concrete impact of the various measures taken to monitor the prohibition of the use of forced child labour in the agricultural sector.

UNICEF VALIDATES THE PROBLEM – AND THE ILO CALLS FOR AN INDEPENDENT MISSION

A powerful argument cutting through the government’s dissembling on this issue is the recent validation of the issue from UNICEF, which stated on its website that forced child labour remained an ongoing problem for women and children. As the ILO Committee aptly noted, the very existence of a UNICEF program in collaboration with the government to mitigate the child labor issue is a tacit admission that the problem exists. Thus the ILO leverages that admission to demand an independent monitoring missions:

Nonetheless, it appears to the Committee that this practice remains prevalent in the country, especially in view of the ongoing project carried out with the assistance of UNICEF to address the situation of child labour in the cotton sector. In light of the Government’s assertion that children are not involved in the cotton harvest, the Committee considers it essential that independent monitors be granted unrestricted access to document the situation during the cotton harvest. In this regard, the Committee observes that the ITUC, ETUC, IUF, EFFAT, ETUF:TCL and EURATEX believe that a mission must be carried out as soon as possible in order to address the practice of child labour in the cotton sector and to initiate steps towards its eradication. The Committee further observes that the Conference Committee on the Application of Standards urged the Government to accept a high-level ILO tripartite observer mission that would have full freedom of movement and timely access to all situations and relevant parties, including in the cotton fields, in order to assess the implementation of Convention No. 182. Noting that the Government has yet to respond positively to this recommendation, the Committee strongly encourages the Government to accept a high-level ILO tripartite observer mission, and expresses the firm hope that such an ILO mission can take place in the very near future.

Yet her argumentation, while methodical, leaves out the obvious counterpoint  – not only has the Uzbek government made an international commitment to end forced child labor, the International Labor Organization is rightly calling Tashkent to account as NGOs and international agencies continue to document the use of children in the cotton harvest.

Hashimova’s argumentation references UN treaties and international norms to make a development-based but ultimately disingenuous argument that because Uzbekistan has higher literacy, better economic indicators, and more cases of prosecution of trafficking than its neighbors, it should not be targeted for censure for its failure to comply with International Labor Organization’s (ILO) conventions — conventions which Uzbekistan has signed and ratified, and claims it is in the process of fulfilling. Recently, in fact, the government created a new inter-agency task force to monitor the issue, a move greeted with skepticism by activists but which indicates that the regime is going through the motions of compliance rather than outright rejection of the principles at stake.

The articles appear to have been sparked by the position that the U.S. government has taken through the US government’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, known as G-TIP. G-TIP publishes a comprehensive report on trafficking in 175 countries each year, and has been critical of Uzbekistan, placing it in the category of “tier 2,” countries needing improvement.

DEFINITIONAL DISPUTES

Hashimova objects to the inclusion of forced child labor in the list of G-TIP,  which was established to implement the UN Trafficking in Persons Protocol, on the grounds that ostensibly the UN treaty would apply only to forcibly taking persons across state borders.

Yet as the G-TIP web page explains, for the last 15 years, ““trafficking in persons” and “human trafficking” have been “used as umbrella terms for activities involved when someone obtains or holds a person in compelled service” – regardless if they are transported.

Hashimova makes a literalist and abstract interpretation of the UN treaty, yet in fact, as the treaty is applied by states as well as UNODC,  the notion of human trafficking does not require transport of persons but merely “acquisition of people by improper means such as force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them.”

She also cites the absence of any statement from UNICEF or UNDP on the issue of child labor as a form of trafficking per se as somehow evidence that it does not constitute such an offense. In fact, UNICEF has recently begun to break a long-standing silence on the issue, admitting that its methodology for examining the problem had been incomplete. It’s also well known that the UN agencies operating in Central Asia tend to mute their criticism  of the autocratic regimes of their host countries to ensure they continue to maintain a presence there and at least complete some helpful projects.

WHY SINGLE OUT UZBEKISTAN?

Hashimova is not only concerned about definitional issues, however, but attacks the US government as well as non-governmental campaigns against child labor in Uzbekistan as unbalanced and unfair. Uzbekistan has “been doing much more than its neighbors,” she says, to investigate and prosecute sex-trafficking and the abuse of labor migrants.”

In reality, Uzbekistan’s record is far from perfect and its means of combating sex trafficking extremely harsh. Since January 2011, for example, unmarried women under 35 are being denied exit visas from Uzbekistan unless they can produce parental consent and numerous other references,  on the suspicion that they may engage in prostitution, uznews.net reported.

Hashimov also objects to what she sees as a selective approach by civil society protesters against forced child labor. Uzbekistan’s neighbors, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, also have issues with forced labor in their cotton harvests, but have not been singled out by NGO campaigns. India, Pakistan or China have child labor problems, too. Why don’t activists work on those countries?

THE CULTURAL EXCUSE

Another argument is that work for children is customary in Uzbekistan and seen by the community as good for children. “The involvement of children in labor has a cultural aspect, which was promoted once the collectivization process started in the Soviet era. Children were encouraged to help their farmer parents and relatives in cotton, corn, vegetable or other fields,” she writes.

But child labor is only beneficial if the work comes after school and is not coerced, or taking place in terrible conditions. The ample documentation of children in the harvest illustrates that it is not children in farm families, but the children of parents who are employed outside of agriculture in other sectors who are coerced to pick cotton. The students are bused by school or government officials, and teachers, doctors, soldiers and other workers are also pressed into service by the state in public drives for the harvest.

Interestingly, a statement made by a UNICEF official at a recent panel discussion was that cotton-picking is not good for children  — they are exposed to toxic pesticides and harsh and debilitating working conditions.

Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration, used to have two sayings that she would invoke when these kinds of arguments were made. The first was, “It’s not cultural, it’s criminal” – in endless disputes about whether violence against women was tolerable for cultural reasons. The same notion applies to forced child labor. Albright’s other saying was, “Just because you can’t act everywhere doesn’t mean you don’t act anywhere.”

LABOR RIGHTS ARE UNIVERSAL

Unions and human rights groups certainly recognize the universality of labor and human rights, affirm them everywhere, and work where they can be effective. In that respect, NGO work on the child labor issue in Uzbekistan because of a confluence of factors — there are groups working on the issue inside the country who ask for solidarity, and who can get information out; the problem is also well-documented and widespread. Other Central Asian countries like Turkmenistan may have the same kind of problems with forced child labor, but it is difficult to get the information and NGO activity is virtual destroyed. Most notably, groups work on Uzbekistan because Tashkent itself has made a highly-publicized commitment to abide by the ILO’s conventions. That doesn’t mean that the NGOs don’t care about India, Pakistan or China — indeed there are human rights groups actively campaigning against forced labor and for children’s rights in those countries.

FORCED ARGUMENTS

Hashimova’s least persuasive argument is that the campaign against forced labor was somehow cooked up because Western companies need to compete with the Uzbek cotton industry, and needed to find a way to put it out of business. She contradicts herself by also claiming, as the Uzbek government does, that it is reducing the share of the cotton industry in the national economy. More to the point, her argument is completely undermined these days by the high price of raw cotton on the exchanges, and the shortages that clothing and sportswear companies are already announcing that will dictate a rise in consumer prices.

Another rather stretched argument also relates to the Soviet legacy. Hashimova says because Uzbekistan was subjugated by Russia in the Soviet Union and essentially “transformed into the Russian Empire’s principal cotton colony,” with “substantial level of social security despite the wage levels” the present system is somehow acceptable. Yet Uzbekistan is hardly subdued by Russia now, which is among its largest customers for the cotton, and the “social security” of private farmers is a chimera – recently, even harsher laws were passed to make the state-controlled agricultural sector even more oppressive for farmers, who have to accept fixed prices and whose farms can be seized if they are viewed as producing below an assessed quota. Uzbeks since independence have hardly chosen the brutal Soviet collectivization model for their society, yet the real transition to private farming has not authentically been made by the state.

G-TIP’S WATCH LIST

What Hashimova is most concerned about, however, is the affect the US sanction of Uzbekistan through G-TIP could mean for their overall relationship. G-TIP recently released an interim assessment of the countries on the Tier 2 “Special Watch List,” which included Uzbekistan, and because of continued non-compliance could be in danger of a downgrading to tier 3, which could impact assistance, says Hashimova:

The importance of the NDN to the Afghanistan war effort cannot be overstated given the constant interdiction of supplies through Pakistan by the Taliban and its Pakistani supporters in recent years. However, this fragile US-Uzbek relationship appears to be on the verge of possible collapse due to arcane and illogical actions by the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (G-TIP).

Yet as Hashimova herself notes, the State Department is likely to issue a waiver due to the need to cooperate with Uzbekistan. And at the end of the day, G-TIP is just doing its job under US law. The use of forced child labor is not just a cultural heritage, it is a violation of US law, part of US policy about international relations in keeping with UN treaty obligations, and most importantly, incorporated into Uzbek national law and international commitments – a fact UNICEF recognizes certainly when it devises programs with the Uzbek government to mitigate child labor.

HUMAN RIGHTS?

Hashimova, who is described as an independent scholar, is a graduate of the University of Essex with a masters in human rights, and listed at the Eurasia Center of the Atlantic Council. She has held positions in Amnesty International’s Asia Advocacy Program and worked for UNDP in Tashkent and also for UNODC as a researcher. So she is grounded in human rights law and practice and experienced with the UN. Yet in these two articles, she has failed to state the obvious about Uzbekistan’s human rights violations or even to mention the term “human rights” at all.

Instead, she echoes the rhetoric the Uzbek government has used about the US government purportedly “taking up the cause of a number of anti-Uzbekistan NGOs and possibly competing cotton exporters to vilify Uzbekistan.”

Yet the revolutions in the Middle East have prompted US policy-makers to contemplate more deeply the human rights values the US professes and the stark consequences of failing to uphold them abroad in the long run. Uzbekistan stands to gain as much from the US in terms of trade and security as Washington seeks from the relationship with Tashkent – there is no need to foreclose the future of Uzbek children, depriving them of schooling and subjecting them to harsh work in a state-controlled industry that benefits only the ruling families and their associates. Most importantly, Tashkent itself now professes the letter of the labor law if not the spirit, and there is no reason why both NGOs and foreign governments cannot call Uzbekistan to account.

Daniel Stevens of the Centre of Contemporary Central Asia and Caucacus, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London spoke about his Centre’s new study of the Uzbek cotton industry What Has Changed? Progress in Eliminating the Use of Forced Child Labour in the Cotton Harvests of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan,. Researchers found that systematic and institutionalized forms of forced child persist. The practice is difficult to eradicate because the reforms intended to transition Uzbekistan to private agriculture have largely been superficial, as the government still maintains a monopoly on export licenses and sets cotton quotas and prices, and farmers become dependent on local administrators for supplies. With adults migrating outside of Uzbekistan for better-paid labor, the incentive for cash-strapped farmers is to use child labor, and local administrators tasked with meeting government quotas exploit children in the harvest.

Umida Niyazova, an Uzbek émigré and leader of the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights, described worrisome new trends this year involving increased police presence and harassment of human rights monitors who tried to track child labor. Niyazova’s group verified that despite the Uzbek leadership’s claims to the contrary, the practice of sending children into the fields continued. At first mainly older children were dispatched early in September, but then the recruitment of children as young as 10 increased over the period of the harvest due to a shorter season with impending cold weather, and the high price of cotton on the world market this year after floods in Pakistan and China. Children earn only 5 cents a kilo and at most $4-5 a day, and have to pay for food and work clothes out of their wages.

Rachel Denber, Acting Executive Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, moderated the discussion, noting that her organization had raised human rights concerns with the European Union before the January 24 visit to Brussels of President Islam Karimov.

A special guest invited by OSI to the meeting was Dr. Susan Bissell, UNICEF’s Chief of Child Protection. UNICEF has been under fire from NGOs due to its failure to take up explicitly the issue of forced child labor in Uzbekistan and its use of an outdated survey that minimized the extent of the problem. Dr. Bissell began by noting the premiere of “Not My Life,” a movie on child trafficking sponsored by UNICEF, and commented that “there was no aspect of childhood that wasn’t damaged in some way in every country in the world,” and advocated a global approach for improving children’s rights.

Dr. Bissell said UNIFEF had raised with the government of Uzbekistan “the links between agricultural reform and child labor,” and Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, in his trip to Central Asia last year, had warned the leadership of the need to institute reforms. She said that while UNICEF was working with the government “to promote social change,” Tashkent was “apparently impervious to the international boycotts”.

While UNICEF staff had observed the use of children in the mass mobilization for the cotton harvest, said Dr. Bissell, they did not see it in the uniform manner in which NGOs had reported. Even so, she acknowledged that the government “was not adhering to its international obligations”.

NGOs have expressed expectations that UNICEF should do more to validate and act upon their reports about the use of forced child labor. Yet Dr. Bissell cautioned that UNICEF is not a monitoring organization .

“We’re not police. We’re not monitors,” she explained, and could only work with local governments to try to ameliorate some of the abusive practices. She cited some efforts in the last harvest in some provinces of Uzbekistan that reportedly yielded “some limited success”. In those areas where UNICEF collaborated with local administrations, the age of the child workers was raised to at least 14, and the period of mobilization was shorter, she said. Even so, she cautioned that labor in the cotton harvest was “one of the most hazardous forms of work,” and “was not acceptable, whether forced or not”. She ascribed the chronic reliance on child labor to the frustrations of officials who were under political pressure to meet quotas, and farmers in debt poverty unable to pay adult wages.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) is the body that is best equipped to do monitoring of labor conditions, said Dr. Bissell. The problem with putting a development agency like UNICEF into this role is that their observations could be incomplete and they could unwittingly report a situation as better than it was, she added. Indeed, that was the charge of NGO critics, but UNICEF has now dropped the outdated survey used in 2006 which was widely discredited by international groups for missing the extent of state exploitation of school children in the cotton campaign.

Unfortunately, the Uzbek government has still not invited the ILO to enter the country during the cotton season, although European Commission President José Manuel Barroso did raise the ILO request during his meeting with Karimov in Brussels.

Originally published by EurasiaNet

Zeromax, or Bunyodkor is reported to have funneled at least 8 million euros into the Barcelona club, which is also sponsored by, ahem, UNICEF.  Conflict of interest, maybe? Since El Pais has emphasized that “what distinguishes Uzbekistan is the systematic abuse of children, millions of which have been forced into slave labor in cotton harvesting,” maybe the team’s Spanish fans and sponsors will feel that its standing of champion of human, and especially children’s rights is not what it used to be.  The beautiful game, indeed.

Previous reviews have highlighted the issue of forced child labor, and in fact this year’s list of questions that the committee submits to the government ahead of the review specifically asks:

17.1. Please provide information on the effectiveness of the steps taken by the State party to enforce the legal provisions (Rights of the Child [Safeguards] Act of 2008) aimed at eradicating child labor, including very young children e.g. in the cotton industry (previous concluding observations, para. 25).

The government’s written reply pushes the art of bureaucratic obfuscation to new heights (or new lows).  Inter-agency committees, task forces, ministries of labor and education, the procuracy, all holding meetings, seminars, prophylactic discussions, printing brochures and booklets and posters…a whirlwind, no, a tsunami of activity, all aimed at eradicating child labor.  Funny how  the three-and-a-half page single space reply avoids mention of the continued, well-documented and widespread mobilization of children for the cotton harvest, on government orders.  But what it does mention, several times, is government cooperation with UNICEF:

Together with UNICEF, the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection held a round table on August 8, 2009, in which the General Prosecutor’s office, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Public Education, the Ministry of Health, the center for specialized professional training, the Council of Federated Trade Unions, the Kamolot movement and the Mahalla Foundation all took part… The Ministry of Labor and Social Protection has signed an agreement with UNICEF on carrying out a sub-project, “Support for the Realization of the National Plan of Action on Child Labor,” of the Annual Defense of the Child work plan, which includes: creation of a joint working group; carrying out research on the social protection of vulnerable children; increasing awareness of child labor; developing informational and training materials; carrying out trainings and the creation of pilot centers; developing minimum standards for children with special needs, etc.

Splendid, isn’t it?  More working groups! More research!  The government is hoping that the committee, in a year that human rights activists have found the worst, most exploitive ever for children in the cotton harvest, will take participation in UNICEF-sponsored seminars as evidence of change.  The Committee’s experts, one hopes, are not so gullible…now if one could only say the same of UNICEF.

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.