This factsheet summarises Anti-Slavery International’s recommendations on how to effectively address state-imposed forced labour under responsible business standards. It is the result of years of collaboration with partners and practitioners that seek to address state-imposed forced labour, particularly with the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region and the Cotton Campaign. 

“When the international community ignores a country like Turkmenistan, it sends a message that some lives – and some struggles – matter less.”

Journalist Khudayberdy Allashov died last August, after a decade of persecution by the Turkmen authorities. They accused him of daring to write about systematic forced labor in the country’s cotton fields – an open secret that isn’t stopping some European textile brands from sourcing from Turkmenistan.

Major American retailers continue to hawk products made with cotton from Turkmenistan despite a long-standing U.S. Customs and Border Protection ban over findings of state-enforced slave labor in the Central Asian nation.

In the latest blog, Ruslan Myatiev, founder of Turkmen.news, details the latest findings from the Turkmen cotton harvest.

Many everyday products we use in the UK, from clothes to coffee, are linked to forced labour. Around the world, millions of people are exploited to make them, while companies here profit. Right now, businesses choose whether to act. That’s not good enough. Protecting people and the planet must be the law. We’re calling for a new UK law to hold companies accountable when they fail to prevent human rights abuses or environmental harm in their supply chains.