Uzbekistan child labour ban ends student slavery in cotton fields
from Anti-Slavery
Uzbekistan has banned child labour, ending the annual forced mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of school children to pick the cotton harvest.
The Uzbek Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyayev signed a decree on Friday 12 September to implement two ratified international conventions against child labour. The ban follows pressure from human rights activists, socially conscious shareholders and US trade associations. In August neighbouring Turkmenistan also banned the use of child labour to pick cotton.
Uzbekistan, the world’s third largest cotton exporter, produces 1.1m tonnes of cotton each year. The Central Asian country reportedly relies on the forced labour of up to 450,000 children, many aged between 10 and 15, to collect the annual cotton harvest.
Each September, school children are forced to miss classes for up to two and a half months to pick cotton. The children spend up to 11 hours a day working in the fields and earn less than two US dollars.
The ban pays testament to the combined impact of NGOs and businesses to pressurise governments to tackle slavery and the ability of companies to eradicate slavery from their supply chain.
On August 15, four US trade associations delivered a letter to the Uzbekistan ambassador in Washington, calling on an immediate end to forced child labour.
On the same day similar appeals were made by a coalition of NGOs and asset management companies to President Islam A. Karimov of Uzbekistan, as well as Juan Somavia, head of the International Labour Organization and US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.
Major retailers and clothing companies, including Tesco, Marks & Spencer, C&A and Gap, already exclude Uzbek cotton from their products over concerns of forced child labour.
The Uzbekistan government had never previously admitted to the use of child labour and in the past has argued that child workers volunteer to help with the harvest.
For further information:
http://www.laborrights.org/stop-child-labor/cotton-campaign/1662
http://uznews.net/news_single.php?lng=en&sub=top&cid=2&nid=7135
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