When the Cotton Campaign launched in 2007, the Uzbek Government was forcing over one million children and adults, including medical staff, public sector employees and students, to pick cotton every year during the harvest. Years of intense policy advocacy and campaigning, led by Uzbek and international civil society, combined with the Uzbek government’s political will and technical assistance by the ILO, made the elimination of systemic state-imposed forced and child labor a reality.

Key elements of the Cotton Campaign’s strategy to end forced labor in Uzbek cotton include:

• Independent monitoring of the annual cotton harvest in Uzbekistan. Since 2010, Uzbek Forum for Human Rights, Cotton Campaign’s frontline Uzbek partner, has monitored the harvest each year. Uzbek Forum’s network of independent and trained monitors is highly skilled in monitoring labor and human rights issues and has a wide range of contacts in rural communities. Every year, Uzbek Forum conducts direct interviews with cotton pickers, farmers, local government officials, and employees of (state) organizations directly involved in the cotton harvest, and collects and analyses information received through media and social media.

• Prompt reporting to the international community on the government’s egregious abuses against human rights activists and independent labor rights monitors. The Cotton Campaign and its partners exposed cases of arbitrary detention, threats, and degrading ill-treatment by government officials to silence independent monitors and undermine their ability to conduct research and provide information about rights violations in cotton production. Before the Uzbek government publicly acknowledged that Uzbek cotton was being produced with forced labor and began taking steps to end this practice, government officials took harsh action against anyone who exposed this.

  Today, the civic space in Uzbekistan remains tightly and arbitrarily restricted. Uzbekistan’s reform program has produced results in terms of eliminating the systematic forced labor of pickers. But in prioritizing prohibition and enforcement, this approach has failed to open up space for independent unions, allow civic participation and develop systems of oversight, transparency, and governance.

• Maintaining a Company Pledge against Uzbek forced labor cotton. In 2010, the Cotton Campaign and its partner Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN) launched the Company Pledge Against Forced Labor in the Cotton Sector of Uzbekistan. By signing it, brands and retailers publicly committed to not use Uzbek cotton in their products as long as it was produced with state-orchestrated forced labor. Within one year, the Pledge was signed by 60 brands. By 2021, the Pledge reached over 320 signatory brands. The Pledge has been critical in the Cotton Campaign’s success to pressure the Uzbek government to end child and forced labor in cotton production.

  Findings of independent civil society monitoring of the 2021 harvest showed that systemic state-imposed forced labor is no longer used in the cotton harvest. As a result, on March 10, 2022, the Cotton Campaign ended its call for a global boycott of cotton from Uzbekistan and announced that the lifting of the Pledge.

• Advocacy with International Financial Institutions (IFIs). Through advocacy and campaigning, the Cotton Campaign successfully leveraged the IFIs’ commitments to human rights to push for reform in Uzbekistan. Research by the Cotton Campaign and Uzbek Forum exposed the World Bank’s links to child and forced labor in projects worth half a billion dollars to the Uzbek government. Intense advocacy with the World Bank and other IFIs prompted the Uzbek government’s approval for the ILO to begin a monitoring program in the country and, ultimately, it led to the government’s historic public acknowledgement of the forced labor problem in a speech by President Mirziyoyev at the UN in September 2017.

• Advocacy with the government of Uzbekistan. In late 2017, the Uzbek government made a groundbreaking political commitment to end forced labor. Since then, the Cotton Campaign has deepened its high-level dialogue with the government to engage constructively in Uzbekistan’s reform process. In 2019, the government invited the Coalition to advise on its reform agenda. In response, the Coalition developed and presented to the government a Roadmap of Reforms, which was received positively. The Roadmap builds on three (strategic) pillars: 1) ending systemic forced labor, 2) enacting structural reforms and 3) empowering civil society. The Cotton Campaign continues to use this Roadmap as the basis for our engagement with the government and cotton textile companies in the country to ensure that reforms to end forced labor are robust and sustainable.

At this new stage in Uzbekistan’s development, as the country seeks to establish itself in the global textile market, the Cotton Campaign highlights the need for broader reforms to empower civil society, protect freedom of association and promote responsible sourcing.

• In 2017, the government of Uzbekistan embarked on a major economic reform program to privatize the cotton industry and expand the manufacturing sector. Supplier textile companies (known as “clusters”) control all aspects of production, from cotton growing and harvesting, through to various stages of value-added processing, up to manufacturing of finished goods.

• This transformation process has, however, primarily focused on supply chain integration. It has not sufficiently emphasized the need for adequate mechanisms to prevent, identify and address labor abuses at all levels of production.

• The Cotton Campaign has developed a model of innovative, rights-based solutions, equipped to guide a re-opening of the Uzbek cotton market to international brands and retailers, while protecting workers’ rights and promoting space for independent civil society.

• At the same time, Uzbek Forum has been monitoring and reporting on the process and impacts of land transfers from farmers to clusters (direct farming) and the relationships between farmers and the clusters they are producing cotton for (indirect farming).

Turkmenistan is one of the most repressive countries in the world. It exerts control over all aspects of public life and severely represses all civic freedoms. The government uses widespread and systematic state-imposed forced labor in the annual cotton harvest. Every year between August–November, public authorities force state employees to pick cotton or pay for replacement pickers under threat of penalty, including loss of employment or reduction of work hours or pay.

The Cotton Campaign has used the following tools to increase pressure on the Turkmen government to end its forced labor system:

• Using independent reports of the forced labor conditions in the cotton fields to advocate with governments, international organizations, brands and investors. These reports are provided by a team of brave, independent activists and labor monitors who work with the Cotton Campaign’s Turkmen partners - Turkmen News and Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights – and run the risk of arrest and torture for doing this work.

• Maintaining a Pledge against Turkmen Cotton. So far, 140 brands and retailers signed it and publicly committed to not use Turkmen cotton in their products as long as it is produced with state-orchestrated forced labor.

• Advancing Turkmen forced labor cotton on the agenda of policy makers, in the context of mandatory human rights due diligence (mHRDD) and trade instruments as tools to push for reform. In 2016, the Cotton Campaign and its partners submitted a petition to exclude all cotton products made in Turkmenistan from the U.S. due to the state-imposed forced labor system in cotton production. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) subsequently issued a Withhold Release Order (WRO) against Turkmen cotton in May 2018, which was the first such country or region-wide WRO to exclude an entire commodity.

• Tracing Turkmen cotton in global supply chains and advocating with global brands and retailers, policy makers and customs authorities across jurisdictions to eliminate it from the global supply chain.

• Maintaining a safe communications channel with monitors and activists on the ground, to promptly report on the government’s egregious abuses and call on international stakeholders to use their leverage and influence with the Turkmen government to end the abuses.