After the Harvest: Reviewing Uzbek Cotton’s Demons

In early February, for the first time a high-level delegation of Uzbek government officials joined the Cotton Campaign for its annual strategy meeting. This signals significant progress not only on the part of advocates focused on eradicating forced labor in the Uzbek cotton industry but indicates greater maturity on the part of the Uzbek government to face its critics and discuss its problems in an open and constructive manner.

Founded in 2007, the Cotton Campaign is coalition of organizations dedicated to the eradication of child and forced labor in cotton production in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Coalition members include not only human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Anti-Slavery International and labor organizations like the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) but investor groups and business organizations like the American Apparel & Footwear Association.

Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan sit among the top 10 cotton producers worldwide. For Uzbekistan in particular, cotton is “white gold,” a cash crop that the state relies upon. According to a U.S government analysis, agriculture accounted for approximately 17.3 percent of Uzbekistan’s GDP as of 2017 and the sector employed 26 percent of the country’s labor force.

The Cotton Campaign’s greatest success to date has been the near eradication of child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry. That success stemmed in part from international pressure, epitomized by the Cotton Pledge and was achieved while Uzbekistan’s cantankerous first president, Islam Karimov, was in office. The pledge, a commitment to end the practice of child and forced labor in the Uzbek cotton industry, was promoted by the Cotton Campaign and orchestrated by the Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN). Initially launched in 2011, the pledge garnered signatures from over 100 brands and retailers, including Adidas and Macy’s. Despite significant loopholes – for example, most manufacturers don’t buy raw cotton directly, they purchase it from third-party processing countries like Bangladesh and China which mix cotton from different growers, obscuring the origin – the pledge nevertheless focused attention on issues of sourcing, dovetailing with rising global awareness of supply chains and social sensitivity to the sources of the goods we consume.

As of January 2019, 311 brands and retailers had signed the pledge.

While Uzbekistan’s cotton exports had been shrinking prior to the pledge, the boycott on Uzbek cotton by major clothing brands extended and quickened that trend. According to official U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates, as Uzbek cotton exports continued to fall, production remained relatively stable and domestic consumption increased. A December 2018 article in Wall Street Journal quoted a Moscow-based economist, Oleg Kouzmin, as noting that the impact of the ban on Uzbekistan’s overall economy wasn’t large. Uzbekistan, he pointed out, merely shifted to second-tier buyers in countries like Turkey, Russia, and Belarus. Nevertheless, activists say that child labor decreased dramatically in Uzbekistan as a result of the pledge.

In September 2018, the U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) removed Uzbek cotton from its list of foreign goods produced using child labor. At the same time, forced labor – of government workers, primarily – remains a major facet of the Uzbek cotton industry. DoL kept Uzbekistan on its list of countries where cotton is harvested using forced labor.

According to the Cotton Campaign’s annual review of the Uzbek cotton harvest, which began in September 2018 and ran through the first week of December, “large-scale, government-implemented forced labor occurred during the recent cotton picking season, even as the government increased commitments to ending the practice.”

The situation is complex. On one hand, the Uzbek government has increased its openness, allowing independent monitors to operate in the country. In previous years, such monitors were routinely harassed and some detained. The Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights (UGF) says it was able to monitor the entirety of the 70-day harvest period in 2018.

Another mark of progress: According to the Cotton Campaign, in the 2018 harvest “health and education employees were not mobilized en masse.” Director of UGF Umida Niyazova said after the Cotton Campaign’s annual strategy meeting in February, “There were significant reductions in the use of forced labor among some vulnerable groups, particularly university students and workers in the health and education sectors.”

But, she continued, “The widespread use of involuntary workers mobilized from state enterprises and other sectors remained apparent, however, showing that systemic drivers of forced labor remain in place.”

Cotton quotas remain in place and local officials who failed to meet their quotas were punished for “deficiencies in organizing the cotton harvest.” Employees of major government enterprises and agencies, the Cotton Campaign report noted, were still required to pick cotton.

As Judy Gearhart, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum, a founding member of the Cotton Campaign, noted in the campaign’s report, “Uzbekistan should be evaluated by actual change on the ground but forced labor will not be eliminated as long as the quota system for both cotton and field labor remains intact.”

The quota system, and fear of punishment and loss of position, motivates local officials to orchestrate schemes to get more people into the fields. This can include threats to public officials’ job security if they don’t pick cotton or pay for a replacement and statements signed under duress that the labor is voluntary.

The Cotton Campaign’s annual strategy meeting on February 4 included a delegation of high-level Uzbek government officials and built on discussions begun in May 2018 when a Cotton Campaign delegation visited Tashkent. The Uzbek delegation, led by Deputy Prime Minister Tanzila Narbaeva, included the Minister of Employment and Labor Relations Sherzod Kudbiev and the Chairman of the Uzbek Textile and Garment Association Ilkhom Khaydarov, as well as the Ambassador of Uzbekistan to the United States Javlon Vakhabov.

Co-founder of the Cotton Campaign, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Bennett Freeman, has been encouraged by the government of Uzbekistan’s engagement. “We are encouraged by the Government of Uzbekistan’s commitment to end decades of forced labor and we are focused now on the many dimensions of this historic task which remain to be completed,” he said. “Our discussions were substantive, constructive, and positive, highlighting both recent areas of significant progress and the major challenges still ahead.”

It’s no small task to upend an entire industry and the weight of history is immense. Uzbekistan’s cotton sector has been predicated on quota systems and forced labor since its inception under the Soviet Union; it has also always featured rampant corruption and abuses of power. While much of the above remains true today, what is different is that the Uzbek government is sitting at the same table as activists and confronting the problems it faces, rather that wallowing in denial.