The long-standing campaign highlighting child labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields has had some recent victories
The international campaign against the use of government-organised forced child labour for cotton picking in Uzbekistan is piling political and economic pressure on the Uzbek government. Three new developments have given campaigners and NGOs reason for increased hope.
In early October, the European parliament rejected a trade deal that would have made it easier for Uzbekistan to export textiles to Europe. The parliament’s foreign affairs committee unanimously ruled that textiles will not be included in a trade agreement between Uzbekistan and the EU until international organisations can verify there is no child labour involvement in the Uzbeki cotton harvest.
This move in Brussels follows on from over 60 of the world’s leading clothing brands signing a pledge to boycott Uzbek produced cotton in September.
Brands pledge
The Responsible Sourcing Network has been driving brands to make this pledge. The network has managed to attract the support of companies such as H&M, Adidas, Puma and Levi Strauss.
Bennett Freeman, senior vice-president for sustainability research and policy at Calvert, the largest US ethical investment house, is however cautious about whether this pledge will have any real financial impact on the Uzbek regime.
Freeman says out that the government of the former Soviet state has never had any problems selling the cotton at the yearly Tashkent cotton fair. Therefore, he suggests, it is entirely possible that the Uzbek government does not see boycotts as a problem.
“It has been difficult to extract an economic price for this continuing action [the on-going campaign],” Freeman argues. However, he retains hope that this new pledge may start to hit the pockets of the regime as large companies increasingly reject Uzbek cotton for garment making.
Fashion police
A further development involvedGulnara Karimova. She is the fashion designer daughter of the Uzbeki president, Islam Karimov, but her interests are not just limited to her fashion lines.
She is also the Uzbeki ambassador to Spain and to the UN and has significant business interests in her home country. Karimova was due to show a collection at the recent New York Fashion week but, after campaigning and pressure by organisations such as Human Rights Watch, her show was barred.
Freeman suggests that the drive behind this more direct form of action against the problem stems from a feeling among NGOs and trades unions that the time has come to raise the visibility of the issue.
Reputational risks
Hugh Williamson from Human Rights Watch, in an interview with Ethical Corporation, explains that HRW decided to target Karimova “as a way of drawing attention to her country’s terrible human rights record … We argued that having Ms Karimova in the show represented a reputational risk to the whole event.”
Association with the Uzbekistan regime is increasingly undesirable to those in the fashion and clothing industry and a potential risk to their public image and their sales.
Williamson argues: “If we can make it harder for an official representing a corrupt and abusive government to profit from their role or make it harder for kleptocrats to spend money or unduly burnish their image, that can help to press for reform and hold them to account.”
There may then be cause for cautious hope in the campaign against Uzbekistan’s human rights violations. Awareness of the reputational risks of Uzbek cotton is slowly gaining ground.