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Cotton crimes campaign

Tell Nike: Don’t Support Forced Labour in Uzbekistan

Nike claims to be a champion of human rights, but if that is true, why is Nike doing business with Daewoo International, a company that is knowingly profiting from forced labour in Uzbekistan?

Every year, during the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan, over a million children and adults – including teachers, nurses and doctors – are forced to work in the cotton fields and meet daily picking quotas enforced by the Uzbek Government.

Over 130 apparel companies (including Nike) have taken a stand against forced labour in Uzbekistan by pledging to not buy forced labour cotton from Uzbekistan. Now, Uzbek human rights activists are calling on apparel companies to completely cut ties with companies, like Daewoo, that are profiting from Uzbek cotton.

Unfortunately, Nike, which sources synthetics from Daewoo, is refusing to end its relationship with the South Korean company in spite of the fact that several other companies, including H&M, C&A, and Michael Kors, have moved to cut ties with Daewoo.

Nike’s decision to protect Daewoo sends a dangerous message to other companies and damages the efforts of Uzbek citizens who have risked their lives to bring justice to Uzbekistan’s cotton fields.

Please join us in asking Nike to stop doing business with Daewoo and agree to implement the Daewoo Protocol – a series of steps the company needs to take to eliminate forced labour cotton from Nike’s supply chain.

Your message

Subject:

Dear Nike,

I am writing to convey my disappointment regarding Nike's decision to continue doing business with Daewoo International, a company that is knowingly profiting from forced labour cotton in Uzbekistan.

For decades, the government of Uzbekistan, under the President Islam Karimov, has forced millions of children and adults - including teachers, nurses, doctors, other public servants and private sector employees to pick cotton under appalling conditions. Those who refuse are expelled from school, fired from their jobs, and denied public benefits or worse. The government combines these penalties with threats, detains and tortures activists seeking to monitor the situation, and steadfastly denies the International Labour Organization access to monitor during the cotton harvest.

Only a handful of companies have proven themselves callous enough to profit from Uzbekistan's forced labour system of cotton production, and even fewer companies are willing to interact with these ruthless operators.

Therefore I was surprised to learn that Nike, which stated its firm opposition to the use of forced labour in the Uzbek cotton sector, continues to do business with Daewoo and is refusing to follow the lead of several well-known apparel companies that have honoured the call by Uzbek human rights activists to remove Daewoo from their supply chains.

Although I understand that Nike only buys synthetic material from Daewoo and does not buy Daewoo cotton, Nike's decision to protect Daewoo sends a dangerous message to other companies and damages the efforts of Uzbek citizens who have risked their lives to bring justice to Uzbekistan's cotton fields. I find it upsetting that Nike harbours companies in its supply chain that are profiting from human rights violations rather than helping to bring an end to one of the most serious and systematic cases of state-sponsored forced labour in our time.

I therefore ask Nike to stop doing business with Daewoo and agree to implement the Daewoo Protocol - a series of steps Nike needs to take to eliminate Uzbek cotton from its supply chains.

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