Bribery Only Way Out for Uzbek Child Workers

Human rights defenders in Uzbekistan say children are once again being drafted in to work on cotton plantations, despite laws banning the exploitation of minors.

Students are also being forced to work for no recompense, and the only way of getting out of it is to bribe officials.

In early June, human rights groups in Uzbekistan reported that thousands of adolescents across the country were being corralled into weeding the cotton crop.

Evidence of state involvement comes from instructions issued by local government officials, the role of schools in sending out parties of pupils and collecting fees for the work they do, and the presence of police on the cotton plantations.

"All the children are sent out to [weed] cotton," an activist in the Yangiyul district of Tashkent region said, adding that all the schools and colleges in thes area were being bussed out to fields and made to work from dawn to dusk.

A similar pattern is being observed in other parts of of Uzbekistan, such as Kashkadarya in the southwest, where a resident said children were working from seven in the morning to “late at night”.

The district government chief for Nukus region in Karakalpakstan, in the north of the country, ordered students from two colleges there to work in the cotton fields until July.

There is one way of gaining an exemption – paying officials a bribe of 60 to 80 US dollars, or about 20 per cent more in the capital Tashkent.

"Everyone who can afford to pay them off does so, because any sensible parents will not want to send their children out into the blazing sun," Yelena Urlaeva, leader of the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan, said. "I have been witness to a situation where the parents of a student at the college of transport obtained the [required] sum and delivered it to the tutor to get their son off working in the fields."

Schools and colleges are earning fees for organising the work parties. Farmers are paying them 15 dollars a hectare for weeding work. The minors receive nothing.

The authorities continue to deny that children are being exploited as forced labour.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection said child labour was a thing of the past, while acknowledging that it might be happening "on a voluntary basis".

"The ministry carries out monitoring on behalf of the state to ensure no child labour is used in the cotton harvest, and the Association of Farmers and the trade unions are required to do their own monitoring,” said the spokesman, who did not want to be named.

He cited a recent joint statement from the ministry, the trade unions federation and the farm association designed to prevent the use of forced child labour.

In 2008, the Uzbek authorities announced that they were banning the use of child labour – something whose existence they had previously denied. The policy turnaround was the result of mounting pressure from the international community, culminating in a boycott by major United States and British textile importers and clothing retailers. The following year, Uzbekistan ratified the International Labour Organisation Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour and the Convention on the Minimum Age for Admission to Employment and Work. 

Since then, the government has dealt with well-documented reports of state-sanctioned child labour by the state by citing its adherence to these conventions, and arguing that this means any cases must involve children volunteering to help out. (See Uzbek Child Labour Rebranded as “Voluntary”)

As one commentator in the Fergana valley put it, "They claim to have prohibited child labour, yet everything remains the same." 

This article was produced as part of IWPR's News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.