Better Cotton Suspends Uzbek Partner After Human Rights Allegations
Better Cotton has suspended the license of one of its Uzbek partners until it delivers “appropriate remediation” for the human rights violations it stands accused of.
The world’s largest sustainable cotton initiative told Sourcing Journal on Tuesday that it made its decision following a February investigation by Uzbekistan’s labor inspectorate, which recommended a course of action to remediate the issues it identified.
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Better Cotton said that it will assess the Singapore-headquartered company’s compliance before the end of the year to determine the next steps, as well as ensure that measures are in place to prevent the alleged violations from reoccurring.
Sourcing Journal reported yesterday that the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights has filed a complaint against Indorama Agro through the independent project accountability mechanism of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which provided the cotton enterprise with $70 million in financing from the bank to modernize the country’s agricultural techniques and provide “enhanced opportunities” to the local population.
The Uzbek Forum has accused Indorama Agro of “land grabbing,” union busting and other human rights violations, which the company denounced as “flawed, misleading and biased.”
Indorama Agro was one of six participants in the inaugural season of Better Cotton’s Uzbek program, which the London- and Geneva-based organization announced in January after the International Labour Organization declared the world’s sixth-largest cotton producer “free” of forced and child labor and the global coalition known as the Cotton Campaign ended its decade-long boycott of the fiber—albeit with caveats about the need for worker-led, ongoing monitoring.
Better Cotton told Sourcing Journal in February that it was recently made aware of the allegations and that it was in “regular dialogue” with campaigners and other partners in the country, along with Indorama Agro itself, as it “responds to relevant complaints.”
“It is important to note that because there have been historic issues of systemic forced labor in Uzbekistan, our approach there includes enhanced assurance activities that are geared to the local context,” a spokesperson said at the time. “All farms receive additional decent work monitoring visits that focus on extensive worker and community interviews, along with management interviews and documentation reviews.”
The representative said that cotton, as a fiber that is vital to the global economy, is “not immune” to environmental and social challenges and that Better Cotton engages in “challenging contexts with diverse stakeholders on a long-term basis” to promote “continuous improvement” in accordance with its standard.
While Better Cotton didn’t respond to a request for comment about the EBRD complaint when Sourcing Journal reached out last month, it said that it suspended Indorama Agro’s license in April.
Indorama Agro didn’t volunteer the information, either, when approached about the Uzbek Forum’s filing. The EBRD told Sourcing Journal that it isn’t able to comment until the dispute process has concluded, which could take a year at the earliest.
“Indorama Agro works closely with international lenders and institutions and diligently follows processes mandated by them in accordance to their required performance standards,” a spokesperson for the company said. “We are co-operating with [the] EBRD wholeheartedly on this issue.”
Umida Niyazova, the Uzbek Forum’s founder and director, said that her nonprofit has gathered extensive evidence over the years about Indorama Agro’s alleged harm to local communities in the Syr Darya and Kashkadarya regions, where it received 49,000 hectares of land via government decree in 2018 with neither the farmers’ “prior, informed” consent nor their compensation.
“This transfer of agricultural land turned out to be a huge loss of income for the local population,” she said. “Instead of creating good jobs, we saw that Indorama Agro hired field workers on short-term civil law agreements without any social guarantees.”
She said that she has spoken to farmers who have complained of delayed payments and exploitative contracts with no minimum prices for their crops. Some told her that they were being forced to use expired fertilizers.
Things came to a head, she said, when workers rallied to create Uzbekistan’s first democratically elected union. Last December, Indorama Agro announced mass layoffs, reclassifying nearly 400 of its 2,000-plus farmers from employees to “service providers” who were no longer eligible for union membership. When 40 “active” union members submitted a complaint to the Uzbek civil court the following month, they ultimately withdrew their filing following “unprecedented pressure” from local police and security forces, Niyazova said.
While the labor inspectorate’s report wasn’t made public, a translated copy that Sourcing Journal viewed listed more than 20 recommendations, including offering permanent employment contracts to workers performing permanent jobs, such as the farmworkers whose contracts had been reclassified; “strictly” monitoring compliance with labor protection guidelines; redrawing contracts according to the model forms approved of by the Uzbek government; and ensuring “sufficient” provision of special clothing, milk, preventive treatment, food, personal protection and hygiene products
The agency found that the workers hadn’t received training about their labor rights. Nor were they provided with periodic medical examinations after an initial physical when they started work.
In the case of nearly 170 workers in the Akaltyn and Sardoba districts, their contracts did not state working hours, including the start and finish times, or lunch times. Wages and vacation periods of the employees were also specified in an annex of the contract, rather than within the contract itself.
Niyazova said on Tuesday that she wasn’t aware of Indorama Agro’s suspension by Better Cotton but that she welcomed it.
“Certification schemes need to offer buyers reliable assurances and they have a responsibility to ensure that their licensees are upholding basic labor standards and fair business practices with the farmers who supply them. In the case of Indorama Agro, this is clearly not the case,” she said. “[Better Cotton] made the right decision.”
