Uzbek Cotton Chronicle, Issue 1 December, 2010. During the cotton harvest season in 2010, the Uzbek German Forum for Human Rights released weekly chronicles of events showing how the Uzbek authorities coerced children and other categories of citizens to pick cotton. We resume with the release of our bulletins regarding the situation of forced labor and child labor in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan. The bulletins will provide materials/information about current events related to human rights abuses in the cotton industry in Uzbekistan. Considering facts and documents we have in our hands, we argue that Uzbekistan is a unique country where the exploitation of people, especially during the cotton harvest in the fall, is organized by the state. Mobilization of adults and children to harvest cotton is ordered by the heads of local administrations, which in turn receive an order from the Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaeva. In response to criticism of human rights defenders, the Uzbek government is limited to the adoption of laws prohibiting child labor. However, the state itself is the principal violator of laws prohibiting exploitation of children. It may be noted that, at the end of the cotton season 2010, there is no sign showing that the government intends to change the policy in the cotton industry of the country. WHAT HAS CHANGED? The School of Oriental and African Studies published the paper WHAT HAS CHANGED? Progress in eliminating the use of forced child labour in the cotton harvests of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Child labour, as defined by the ILO, is widely used in the cotton harvests of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Cotton picking is hazardous work and is being carried out by many under aged children, in many cases under threat of coercion and sometimes with damaging effects on their education, health and morals. The extent of the problem is significantly greater in Uzbekistan, where child labour is on a large scale, more ubiquitous and more intense, with children working long days with no break over a two month period. As such the effect on the child s health and education is greater, and the threat of coercive measures appears to be more consistent. Forced child labour exists in both countries, though the extent and agents of coercion in Tajikistan are much more variable. Farmers appear to play a more proactive role in recruiting children for the cotton harvest; they negotiate with schools, and other local authorities act as brokers to varying degrees in different districts. The pattern of coercion in Uzbekistan was consistent across the four regions surveyed. The survey results revealed that the district hokimyat orchestrated the mobilization of the cotton harvest, allocating quotas to various public organizations in the region, including schools, and then pairing them off with
farms. This does not preclude intensive negotiations behind the scenes between the hokimyat and the various actors, but the hokimyat was seen by all respondents to be extremely powerful and highly focused on ensuring it met its own target. Combining the bottom up perspective that the survey provides with other reports of the operations at the national level reveals a highly orchestrated campaign led by the central government. In Uzbekistan, ratification of the ILO conventions and the introduction of a National Plan of Action to eliminate the worst forms of child labour have seemingly had little effect on the extent of the mobilization. In some ways it may have become worse. In 2008 an attempt to rely on other forms of conscripted labour was abandoned upon reports of poor weather, and the subsequent use of child labour was particularly intense. The continued use of child labour in both countries is not surprising given that the root causes have not significantly changed over the last few years. The short time window available for the cotton harvest will always create labour bottlenecks, aggravated by the move away from mechanization and an outflow of migrant labour. Many parents and teachers noted that there were unemployed males in their village during the cotton harvest who did not seem to participate, some having returned from abroad. However, it seems likely that in the absence of significant changes to the agricultural system and an increase in day wages, this potential pool of labour will again disappear once economic growth returns in destinations such as Russia and Kazakhstan. The key factor is that the structure of the agriculture sector is still skewed towards relying on statesupported labour mobilization, and farms lack the resources to pay competitive wages for adult cotton pickers. In Tajikistan, attempts to renew the sector are still being held back by the debt that many farms face. In Uzbekistan, the central government still exercises considerable control over the whole process of cotton production, ginning and export. While the revenues may be of decreasing relative importance to the overall economy, they remain fundamental to the system of political patronage and control in the country. This analysis also highlights the centrality of systems of governance in shaping the use of child labour in countries coming from a similar starting point. The greater administrative including coercive capacities of the state in Uzbekistan, along with its lesser dependence on international aid, mean that it has been able to sustain a command approach to cotton production. This involves controlling allocation of the land, setting quotas for crops, and then controlling prices both for inputs and the output (raw cotton). As a result, the state is able to maintain a vertically integrated system of extraction that theoretically can serve broader state economic policies, but in practice seems better suited to providing rent seeking opportunities as cotton is sent to the ginners, graded and then allocated for export. In Tajikistan, the legacy of civil war has created a much more decentralized and unpredictable system of governance, leading to much greater variety in the regions and greater space for shaping the agricultural system at the local level. The full text of the report can be downloaded here: http://www.soas.ac.uk/cccac/centres publications/file64329.pdf Child labour call over British cotton merchants
The European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) has filed complaints in the UK against Cargill Cotton and ICT Cotton, calling for an investigation into whether the companies "have contributed substantially to maintaining the use of child and forced labour in the Uzbek cotton production". The ECCHR believes the companies have broken Organisation for Economic Co operation and Development (OECD) guidelines by purchasing Uzbek cotton harvested through forced child labour. Cargill Cotton said it had raised concerns over child labour with the Uzbek government and that it was important to find "sustainable solutions, whilst fostering responsible economic development". Hundreds of thousands of children are forced to work in Uzbekistan's cotton harvest each autumn, according to information set out in the complaint documents. They spend two to four months picking cotton, with those who fail to meet their quotas punished with low grades and beatings. Families who do not co operate may have their gas, electricity and water services cut off, as well as suffering physical violence, arrest and prosecution. The complaint states: "Although forbidden by Uzbek law, the industrial system of harvesting cotton is founded on the systematic and exhaustive use of child and forced labour." Joanna Ewart James of Anti Slavery International said: "While cotton traders continue to buy Uzbek cotton it remains almost impossible to ensure that the clothes we are wearing are not linked to children in slavery. Cotton traders need to accept their responsibility not to provide incentives for forced labour to continue in Uzbekistan. According to the complaints, the two British companies were linked to Uzbekistan through branch offices in Tashkent and partnerships with Uzbek state owned merchants. The OECD complaints are part of a pan European campaign targeting seven cotton traders, with similar complaints filed in Germany, France, and Switzerland. Cargill Cotton said it was concerned by the claims of enforced labour. A spokesman said: "We do not accept the use of illegal, abusive or enforced labour in any of our operations and we abide by the laws in the countries in which we operate. We have raised concerns about abusive or enforced child labour at meetings with representatives from the government of Uzbekistan." Source: Epsom Guardian, 12.12.2010 http://www.epsomguardian.co.uk/uk_national_news/8733374.child_labour_call_over_cotton_firms/ Open Letter to the World Bank Tashkent based Human Rights Sosiety Ezgulik has released an open letter to Mr. Shigeo Kats, Vice President of the World Bank. The letter states: We would like to pay Your and public attention to the World Bank project, Rural Enterprise Support Project Phase 2, which is a continuation of a project by the same name that had been implemented from 2001 to 2008.
As the authors of the Project Appraisal Document stated themselves, the Project's phase two had been initiated by the Government of Uzbekistan, so the Bank did have an incentive to encourage the Uzbek government to meet its international obligations in terms of the rights of children and farmers. Did the bank try to use this leverage? We doubt it did. After a careful reading of the aforementioned Appraisal Document and comparison between its assumptions and the reality on the ground, we would like to respectfully express our disagreement with some of these assumptions, namely on the following two issues: 1) The state of reforms in agriculture of Uzbekistan; 2) The extent of child labor in the cotton sector of Uzbekistan. On the first of these issues, we believe that it would be incorrect to say, as the authors of the Appraisal Document did, that there have been fundamental reforms in the agricultural sector. Despite the transformation of collective farms into private farms, the centralized management in two major sectors of agriculture, grain and cotton sectors that occupy up to 70% of arable lands, has remained almost entirely unchanged. The command economy continues to prevail in these two sectors. The World Bank s Appraisal Document has failed to recognize that farmers remain to be under a direct administrative control of the executive government. As kolkhozes in the past, the farmers are still denied the right to decide what crops to sow in their fields, as well as the right to dispensation of their products. The phase One of the World Bank Rural Enterprise Support Project which the authors of the appraisal document regard as successful may has indeed brought some benefit to farmers, but mainly in terms of technical and financial benefits such as the revitalization of irrigation and drainage systems, as well as the allocation of loans to the farmers in five selected districts where the project was implemented. But at the institutional level, it failed to promote genuine reforms, in contrary to what the authors of the Appraisal Document claim. As we said, the farmers still lack the freedom of enterprise, and the decollectivization has changed a little since the times before the RESP 1. There is no guarantee that the second phase of this project, which began this year, will demonstrate any progress in this regard, as there are no signs of the government's intentions to liberalize the cotton and grain sectors and give farmers the right to decide how to dispose of their land and production. The assessment in the document on the issue of child labor is even more dismaying to us. The authors of the Appraisal Document state that the use of child labour in the cotton industry in Uzbekistan is not a big issue. It would be naive to suggest that the staff of the World Bank office in Uzbekistan, which has been present in the country for quite a number of years, would be unable to notice the magnitude and scope of this problem. In any case, we think this ignorance is unacceptable and undermines the credibility of the Bank, at least, in the eyes of the civil society of Uzbekistan. The full content of the letter to the Vice President of the World Bank and the review of the Bank Project is available: http://www.uzbekgermanforum.org/news/ezgulik open letter vice president world bank http://www.uzbekgermanforum.org/news/ezgulik independent review world bank s rural enterprisesupport project phase 2
Feel free to disseminate these reports further and post them on your websites. More reading: FAQ: http://www.cottoncampaign.org/frequently asked questions/ Academic view of the subject: http://www.soas.ac.uk/cccac/events/cotton sector in centralasia 2005/file49842.pdf Uzbek German Forum for Human Rights, 2010, http://www.uzbekgermanforum.org/