Uzbekistan Asking Textile Industry to End Boycott

As recently as five years ago, the fashion industry and human rights activists were pushing the U.S. government to pressure Uzbekistan to reform (see 14081916 and 1602040016). But under a new government, human rights activists have been released from prison, and the wages for picking cotton have increased dramatically, up to 85 percent higher than in 2017. "Systematic or systemic child labor can no longer be considered a serious concern," the International Labour Organization wrote in a report evaluating the 2018 harvest. It said that the proportion of cotton pickers who are forced to work without pay was 6.8 percent, down from 14 percent three years earlier. Because local farmers have government-mandated production quotas, but the prices they were paid were not adequate to recruit workers, there had been a policy of conscripting public sector workers, doctors, students and teachers into the fields during the harvest. ILO says a prohibition on this kind of conscription was systematically implemented in Uzbekistan. Even from 2017, when the State Department listed Uzbekistan as Tier 2 in the Trafficking in Persons report, the number of forced laborers dropped by half.

Azam Farmanov, who was a political prisoner in Uzbekistan from 2006 to 2017, said through an interpreter at a press conference April 29 that as he observed the cotton harvest last year, he saw for himself "there is a strong political will to eradicate forced labor. It's not a thing that happens in one day. It takes step by step movement."

In March, the Labor Department certified that Uzbek cotton is not produced with child labor (see 1903220021). Uzbekistan's Ambassador to the U.S. Javlon Vakhabov said the government is working to privatize cotton farms, though he denied there are quotas that can lead to forced labor.

Eric Gottwald, deputy director of the International Labor Rights Forum -- one of the groups that organizes the Cotton Pledge that encourages brands not to source Uzbek cotton -- said they're not ready to declare victory, because even 6.8 percent forced labor is 170,000 people. He acknowledged great progress has been made, but said there's still significant work to finish the job. He also suggested that even if the Cotton Pledge were terminated, Western brands would not want to take the reputational risk to buy from Uzbekistan.

Aziz Akhrarov, an owner of garment factories in Uzbekistan, hopes that changes, because he believes the higher standards brands require would accelerate the development of an Uzbek garment industry. Already, more of the cotton produced in Uzbekistan is processed into yarn or fabric before being exported, and it's the government's hope that the country moves up the textile value chain in coming years. Akhrarov said that about 85 percent of Uzbekistan-made garments are sold to other countries that were in the Soviet Union, and 15 percent are sold in Western Europe.

Uzbekistan is hoping to receive Generalized System of Preferences-Plus status in the European Union, which would eliminate garment tariffs. About 60 percent of Uzbek cotton is sold to Bangladesh, Akhrarov said, though some is not labeled with the right country of origin as it passes through traders' hands. But even with the Cotton Pledge, that doesn't mean he can't export to the West. Akhrarov said he sent a test shipment of a half-container of cotton to the U.S., and it cleared Customs with no problem. He said he's selling T-shirts on Amazon to U.S. consumers, too.

In an interview after the press conference, Akhrarov said raw cotton sells for $2 a kilogram, while even a simple T-shirt sells for $12 a kilogram. He has hired Bangladeshi technicians for his factories. "This is the country we should learn from," he said, citing that Bangladesh sold $38 billion worth of garments last year. Uzbekistan sold just $1.5 billion.