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TASHKENT (TCA) — Uzbekistan plans to bring the volume of textile exports to US $2 billion this year, Ilhom Haydarov, the chairman of the Uzbek Textile Industry Association, said before the opening of the Global Textile Days in Tashkent 2019 forum held in the capital of Uzbekistan on September 9-13, Xinhua reported. Continue reading
TASHKENT (TCA) — The United States has removed Uzbek cotton from a list of products that are barred from the country of concerns about child labor, RFE/RL reported. Continue reading
TASHKENT (TCA) — On February 4-6, a government delegation of Uzbekistan including Deputy Prime Minister Tanzila Narbayeva and Minister of Employment and Labor Relations Sherzod Kudbiyev will visit the United States. The delegation, responsible for issues of eradicating forced labor, will take part in the annual meeting of Cotton Campaign global coalition, in Washington, DC, the Jahon information agency reports with reference to the Uzbek Embassy in the United States. Continue reading
ASHGABAT (TCA) — On October 1, when Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov was addressing the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly in New York, activists of the Cotton Campaign human rights movement held a rally outside the United Nations headquarters protesting the state-sponsored forced and child labor in Turkmenistan’s cotton fields, independent foreign-based news website Chronicles of Turkmenistan reported. Continue reading
TASHKENT (TCA) — Uzbekistan has achieved a remarkable progress in the elimination of forced and child labor in its cotton industry, but Uzbek officials cannot guarantee that the practice will disappear overnight. We are republishing this article on the issue, written by Joanna Lillis, originally published by Eurasianet: There is a palpable buzz in the air in Uzbekistan these days, following a decision by the U.S. Department of Labor to remove the country from a blacklist of cotton producers that rely on child workers. Responding to the decision, as laid out in a Department of Labor report published last week, the Uzbek External Trade Ministry predicted exciting developments. “It will open the path to potential cooperation with leading foreign brands in the textile industry – Gucci, Louis Vuitton, H&M, OGGI, Adidas, Nike and others. It will also create new opportunities to develop exports of textile goods to developed countries, including nations in the European Union and North America, and Japan,” the ministry said. For a country that has faced almost a decade of escalating industry embargoes against its cotton exports, these should be exciting times. Rights groups warn, however, against complacency and say more needs to be done rooting out forced labor before Uzbek cotton’s reputation is fully sanitized. The process of independently vetting standards during cotton-harvesting season, which is currently underway, has fallen on rights activists and, more recently, the International Labor Organization, or ILO. On a recent afternoon in mid-September, a dozen rights campaigners gathered at a Tashkent hotel for an event held under the ILO’s auspices to engage in a debate that would have been unthinkable even just a couple of years ago. The campaigners, who have been registered on the government’s coordinating council on forced labor, included some perennial figures of Uzbekistan’s tiny and beleaguered human rights community, such as Yelena Urlayeva and Sukhrat Ganiyev. Discussions revolved around how exactly forced labor could properly be defined. Do only open intimidation and threats of reprisals apply, or does psychological manipulation count? Positions on this point vary, which is what makes this year’s planned harvest-monitoring exercise noteworthy. “The people who are in the room today will be participating in […] monitoring this year. This is quite a big development. It’s something that builds on the dialogue that we have facilitated with the government since 2017,” Jonas Astrup, the ILO’s chief technical advisor in Tashkent, told Eurasianet on the sidelines of the training event. One of the more nuanced areas for consideration in evaluating the scale of forced labor is the extent to which long-standing traditions of communal work and social mores can be said to apply. Khashar, ostensibly voluntary group labor to help the community, and andisha, an Uzbek term that defies translation but can describe anything from concepts of tact and social conscientiousness to prudence, caution or discretion, are common ways of mobilizing a workforce for large short-term efforts. Labor rights campaigners are under no illusions that their job will be easy this fall, but with campaigners...
BISHKEK (TCA) — Central Asian countries intend to increase their export of agricultural products to the partner countries in the Eurasian Economic Union, as well as to the European Union. Continue reading
