Uzbek Cotton Sector at Risk of ‘Backsliding’ Into Forced Labor

Jasmin Malik Chua
·6 min read

Despite reforms in Uzbekistan’s cotton sector that have all but eliminated state-sponsored forced labor, the risk of relapse remains high, a new report on the 2023 harvest revealed Thursday.

While independent civil society monitoring by the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights found “no widespread, systematic, government-imposed forced labor” during the year, observers found a “distinct” increase in reports of coercion in interviews and across social media throughout the harvest. In the five regions where monitoring took place, monitors documented cases where employees of banks and state-owned organizations were compelled to pick cotton wherever manpower was in short supply, suggesting that some form of mobilization is taking place to fulfill cotton production targets—the same targets that were supposed to have been abolished during the overhaul.

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The findings illustrate the challenge of pushing for systemic change without fixing foundational issues of governance. Despite the absence of orders from the central government to conscript employees into cotton fieldwork, the report said, the “system of administrative coercion and control creates incentives for officials to turn to forced labor to deal with shortages of pickers.”

“It is…evident that Presidential Advisor Shukhrat Ganiev exerted enormous pressure on regional officials to meet production targets, who, in turn, issued orders to forcibly mobilize cotton pickers,” the Uzbek Forum wrote. “The system of coercion in Uzbekistan’s cotton production is essentially passed down a chain of command that begins at the top of government.”

2023 was already shaping up to be an anomalous year. For one thing, the central government failed to announce an official rate for cotton picking as it had before, confusing farmers and leaving pickers uncertain about applying for positions. In the absence of state guidelines, farmers hewed to the previous year’s rates, leaving pickers ultimately earning less when inflation was taken into account. This, plus the lack of clarity about cotton picking’s earning potential versus other agricultural jobs likely contributed to the shortage of bodies. An exodus of seasonal workers who returned to Uzbekistan only temporarily during the pandemic also did not help.

In short, the system failed the “stress test,” said Allison Gill, legal director at Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum (GLJ-ILRF), a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. “The fact that officials resorted to forced labor shows that the current reforms aren’t enough and the danger of serious backsliding remains,” she said.

The GLJ-ILRF leads the Cotton Campaign, the multi-stakeholder coalition that rallied hundreds of brands and retailers, including Adidas, Gap Inc., H&M Group and Zara owner Inditex in a decade-plus boycott against Uzbek cotton before calling it off in 2022. The decision coincided with another report from the Uzbek Forum, a frontline partner of the campaign, that found for the first time in 11 years of consecutive monitoring no state-imposed forced labor during a cotton harvest. It hailed this as a “landmark achievement,” one that could restore Uzbek cotton’s place in the international textile sourcing firmament.

“For the first time, independent monitors did not document systemic, government-imposed forced labor organized by the central government in any of the areas monitored,” the report said at the time. “Although there were some incidents of forced mobilization of state employees imposed by government officials, it was not on a scale that suggests it was coordinated by the central government.”

This would change by the following year.

The Uzbek Forum cites three key factors for why forced labor reared its head during the 2023 season. Continued state control over the cotton harvest and the persistence of “de facto” cotton production targets is one of them. A second is the lack of bargaining power for farmers, who are unable to choose which “cluster”—privately owned, vertically integrated enterprises involved in growing, processing, manufacturing and exporting fiber and textiles—to sell to, leaving them unable to negotiate fair prices for their cotton and thwarting their ability to pay competitive prices to recruit sufficient numbers of voluntary pickers. The third, a dearth of strong remedy and grievance mechanisms and freedom of association protections at workplaces.

The last, which a U.S. Department of Labor-funded initiative is hoping to change, is a central complaint in the Uzbek Forum’s case against Indorama Agro, a Singapore-headquartered cotton enterprise whose license was suspended by Better Cotton following allegations of human rights and other abuses. (Indorama Agro has called these claims “flawed, misleading and biased.”) Meetings between Uzbek Forum monitors and Indorama Agro workers have been disrupted by security officials and monitors hauled off for hours of interrogation by the police, the report said. In January, one monitor was told by a man who introduced himself as a government official that a criminal case was being prepared against the organization, that its labor rights monitoring at Indorama Agro was “illegal,” and that the monitors’ lives were in danger due to their work.

“The cotton production system in Uzbekistan remains coercive, despite reforms to end systematic and widespread state-imposed forced labor,” said Umida Niyazova, executive director of the Uzbek Forum. “To make further progress toward a sustainable cotton sector, reforms are needed to enable and protect farmers’ freedom of choice over what crops they grow and which cotton companies they enter into contracts with, as well as farmers’ bargaining rights to negotiate the contracts’ terms and conditions.”

The report cautions brands and retailers seeking to source cotton from Uzbekistan to remain vigilant. They need to evaluate whether a supplier has the “means and capacity” to effectively implement human rights due diligence and mitigate risks in its Uzbek supply chain before pulling the trigger. They should “engage in good faith” with the Cotton Campaign and explore the possibility of joining its pilot program for responsible sourcing. Just as important, they must convey to the Uzbek government and textile industry the need for unobstructed independent monitoring to identify, prevent and remedy labor violations per international rights standards and supply chain legislation.

Licensing, certification, and auditing programs should similarly take heed, it said. Any comprehensive due diligence exercise must assess the enabling environment for labor rights and take into account the implementation of reforms to end forced labor “in practice,” a gap analysis and mitigation strategies.

Nate Herman, senior vice president of policy at the American Apparel & Footwear Association, a signatory of the Cotton Campaign, called safeguarding workers’ and farmers’ right to freedom of association and collective bargaining “essential” to encouraging brands to source cotton from Uzbekistan.

“Not only is this the right thing to do and built into brands’ vendor contracts, but growing regulations worldwide require brands to ensure the protection and respect of workers’ rights,” he said.