“You work like a slave from morning till night, not enough food, [we] sleep and wake up hungry again.” – student of Andijan Agricultural Institute, Uzbekistan, September 2016.
Every year the Government of Uzbekistan, one of the world’s largest exporters of cotton, forces hundreds of thousands of people out of their regular jobs and sends them to the cotton fields to toil for weeks in arduous and hazardous conditions. Some have even died in fields from extreme heat and accidents.
Watch our short video explaining the practice:
End Cotton Crimes campaign
We work in partnership with the Cotton Campaign, a wide coalition of organisations, lobbying governments, international organisations and businesses to put pressure on the governments of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to end these abuses.
Our work has recently been made harder by the increasingly lenient approach by governments and international organisations towards Uzbekistan after it stopped forcing children to pick cotton – following years of campaigning by the Cotton Campaign – but replaced them with adults.
Much of that is down to the Uzbek Government’s propaganda narrative claiming that systematic forced labour has been eliminated. It has not.
However, there are signs that the pressure from campaigners might make the Uzbek Government soften their stance. This is all due to the increasing awareness of this issue amongst the public, as well as governments and businesses.
We need to keep it up to end Cotton Crimes for good. Please share our campaign with others, and sign up to our newsletter to keep up to date with latest developments in this and other campaigns.