Complaint against cotton traders in Europe

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) together with the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights, Sherpa and solicitor Guido Ehrler filed seven complaints against European cotton traders buying cotton from Uzbekistan in Germany, Switzerland, France and the UK. The Swiss National Contact Point  (NCP) for the OECD has now responded to the complaint, in line with the UK NCP.

ECCHR and its partners allege that the named traders support the systematic use of forced child labour and forced labour in the Uzbek cotton harvest. 

In February, the UK NCP accepted the two complaints filed in the UK for further examination. The Swiss NCP has followed suit and will now open the mediation process.

 

ECCHR welcomes this decision and hopes that it will  encourage similar responses from the German and French NCPs in due course.

EU refuses to send a delegation to Uzbekistan

The EU has decided not to send a delegation to Uzbekistan in protest at the country's recent decision to shut down the office of New York-based Human Rights Watch in Tashkent.

Michael Mann, spokesman for the EU Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton, said that the EU had decided not to send EU delegation to Uzbekistan and that there was no-one there now.

The decision to set up an EU delegation in Tashkent was taken during Uzbek President Islam Karimovs visit to Brussels this January and his meeting with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Barroso and Karimov discussed the release of human rights activists Agzam Farmonov, Norboy Holjigitov and Isroiljon Holdorov and accreditation for representatives of Human Rights Watch. Karimov also agreed to allow representatives of the International Labour Organisation into the country to monitor the use of child labour in the cotton industry.

Two months on from the meeting, the human rights activists are still in prison, while Human Rights Watch has been forced to close down its office in Tashkent.

Michael Mann said that dialogue regarding human rights would continue with Uzbekistan and that the EU would be pressuring Tashkent to change its decision on Human Rights Watch.

Reported by The Times of Central Asia

Uzbekistan closes Human Rights Watch office in Tashkent

The advocacy organisation Human Right’s Watch has announced that the Government of Uzbekistan has expelled its employees from the country, and reports that it is shutting down its Tashkent office after a 15 year presence.  The expulsion could not come at a worse time for Uzbekistan where human rights are routinely and systematically violated. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of children are forced into slavery to pick cotton for the Government-run industry, and there are ongoing reports of torture and ill-treatment within the criminal justice system.

"The Uzbek government's persistent refusal to allow independent rights groups to carry out our work exacerbates the already dire human rights situation in the country, allowing severe abuses to go unreported, and further isolating the country's courageous and beleaguered human rights community," said Human Rights Watch Executive director Kenneth Roth.

Not only have the Uzbek government forced many NGOs to leave, it has also consistently denied access to independent human rights monitors. Human rights defenders in Uzbekistan have been calling for the cotton harvest to be independently monitored for a number of years to ensure the Government is meeting its international obligations.

To read Human Rights Watch's press release click here.

Sting stung by Radio 4 Today

Radio 4’s Today programme recently discussed the “murky world” of the pop stars paid a fortune for playing private gigs for dictators.

The first celeb under fire was Sting who in February 2010 performed for the daughter of President Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan. 

Sting’s decision to accept £2 million to perform for the dictator’s daughter landed him in hot water with a cynical press, though his situation was nothing compared to opponents of President Karimov who have been boiled to death.

When questioned about singing for such a controversial figure, Sting said: "I am well aware of the Uzbek president's appalling reputation in the field of human rights as well as the environment. I made the decision to play there in spite of that. I have come to believe that cultural boycotts are not only pointless gestures, they are counter-productive, where proscribed states are further robbed of the open commerce of ideas and art and as a result become even more closed, paranoid and insular."

Sting’s decision to play in Uzbekistan is a PR coup for the government who wants the country to be part of the international scene. In reality the Uzbekistan government still forces hundreds of thousands of children are forced by pick cotton each season.

Celebrities must recognise their responsibilities and be aware that by agreeing to gigs and events at the invitation of such leaders they appear to endorse regimes that sponsor slavery. 

World Bank-backed child labour in Uzbek agriculture

The Bank’s support of agriculture in Uzbekistan has landed it in hot water suggesting that it does not take seriously the social implications of such lending. Ezgulik, an Uzbek NGO, issued a report in December 2010 documenting severe flaws in the Bank's assessments in providing the second phase of a $67.9 million loan to the Uzbek government. The loan, provided through IDA, the Bank’s low-income country arm, was a renewal of funding for the agriculture sector for 2010-2015.

The report documents a number of failures in the Bank’s support, ranging from assumptions made about reforms underway in the agricultural sector to overestimates of pay being $300 per month for adult labourers rather than the $100 reported by Ezgulik. According to Ezgulik, most disturbing is the Bank’s conclusion that their social assessment did not reveal extensive use of child labour, contrary to reports by other institutions including UNICEF. Child labour in the Uzbek cotton fields has been widely documented by national and international NGOs in recent years. “[S]chool kids are working in cotton fields in hazardous conditions ... while the agro-project managers of the World Bank keep reporting success stories about the situation in the farming sector of Uzbekistan,” concludes Ezgulik.

NGO Anti-Slavery International, whose European-wide campaign Cotton Crimes seeks to end slavery in the cotton sector has also raised concern about the Bank's support of Uzbekistan. "Uzbekistan's authorities' use of coercion to force adults and children into the cotton fields during the harvest has been well-documented, including by SOAS in their recent report 'What has changed?'," says Joanna Ewart-James. "It is therefore imperative that the World Bank has effective screening policies in place to ensure that funds for rural development do not support the ongoing practice of state-sponsored forced labour."

This article was first published by the Bretton Woods Project

European Council keen to expand trade in textiles with Uzbekistan

The Council of the European Union has announced that it has agreed changes to the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with Uzbekistan to extend the provisions of the PCA to the trade in textiles. This is of concern to the campaign as the proposed changes contradicts a strong and clear message to Uzbekistan that the priority must be to end the systematic use of forced child labour during the annual cotton harvest. However these changes have to be approved by the European Parliament and so this is an opportunity to call on the Parliament to block this process and at the very least, ensure that it is conditional on Uzbekistan ending this practice.

The Association for Human Rights in Central Asia has begun a petition calling for this decision to be reconsidered and for human rights concerns to be taken into account. The petition can be read and signed here. 

Petition progress

Thanks for signing the petition, we now have over 1,000 signatories and change.org, a website which aims to mobilise people to take action to support campaigns globally has also recently posted our petition on its site. We need more signatures to show the European Parliament that this is an issue of concern so please ask your friends to sign on too!