Uzbek Child Labour Ban Hard to Enforce
Uzbek Child Labour Ban Hard to Enforce
The authorities in Uzbekistan have formally outlawed the practice of using children to work the cotton fields, although local observers say it will take time before the ban is universally observed.
On September 12, Prime Minister Shavkat Mirzieyev signed off on plans to bring into force two international child protection documents which Uzbekistan ratified in April this year – the Convention Concerning the Minimum Age for Admission to Employment and the Convention concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour. The government also approved a National Action Plan for the minimum age convention.
The new rules mean that minors under the age of 15 cannot be engaged as employees, and applies equally to cotton farming, where child labour has been widely used in recent years. It was standard practice for schoolchildren to be deployed for the cotton harvest, which generally begins in mid-September.
The ban follows a boycott of Uzbek cotton announced by four major United States and British clothing import and retail associations, in response to the use of child labour.
NBCentralAsia observers say the ban on child labour is intended to address international concerns and maintain Uzbekistan’s dominant role as the world’s second-largest cotton exporter. Of the 3.5 million tons of raw cotton grown annually, at least 1.5 million tons goes to export. Much of it is picked by hand.
Some local observers say the ban is already taking effect, noting a marked absence of children in some cotton-growing areas in the run-up to the harvest.
“There are law enforcement officers patrolling many of the fields to ensure the instructions are enforced,” said Mamurjon Azimov, a human rights activist from the Jizak region of central Uzbekistan.
The authorities appear to be intent on showing that the cotton harvest can be conducted without using children, and claim to have adequate numbers of cotton-harvesting machines.
Yet many farmers question whether this will be enough, and suspect that they will have to go back to the time-honoured tradition of recruiting schoolchildren and college students.
Farmers say that although they are technically independent, they are still bound to the state by a rigid system which requires them to grow a certain quota of cotton and deliver it to a government monopoly purchasing agency.
“We can’t pick the cotton we’ve grown unless we use children,” said Atanazar Allaberganov, a farmer from the northwestern region of Khorezm, explaining that this year’s crop had been planted in densely-packed rows 60 centimetres apart, whereas a harvesting machine needs a gap of 90 centimetres to pass between the rows.
The farmer said he knew of 300 under-age schoolchildren already working on cotton plantations in his immediate vicinity.
The reason the plants are so close together is the result of an earlier instruction from the authorities to maximise the yield. This year’s national production target has been set at 3.6 million tons.
Experts say child labour in Uzbekistan is unlikely to be eradicated as long as the authorities go on using the current heavy-handed approach to cotton production – imposing the “state order” quota system, enforcing it with tough penalties, and deploying police to ensure the harvest is gathered in.
Another obstacle is the lack of transparency in Uzbekistan, making it hard to measure the extent to which the ban will actually be enforced.
As Nadezhda Ataeva, head of the Paris-based Human Rights in Central Asia Association, pointed out, “The National Action Plan makes no provision for human rights activists and journalists to monitor its implementation, so there is every reason to believe that compulsory [child] labour will recur in the cotton sector.”
(NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service is resuming, covering only Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for the moment.)
On September 12, Prime Minister Shavkat Mirzieyev signed off on plans to bring into force two international child protection documents which Uzbekistan ratified in April this year – the Convention Concerning the Minimum Age for Admission to Employment and the Convention concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour. The government also approved a National Action Plan for the minimum age convention.
The new rules mean that minors under the age of 15 cannot be engaged as employees, and applies equally to cotton farming, where child labour has been widely used in recent years. It was standard practice for schoolchildren to be deployed for the cotton harvest, which generally begins in mid-September.
The ban follows a boycott of Uzbek cotton announced by four major United States and British clothing import and retail associations, in response to the use of child labour.
NBCentralAsia observers say the ban on child labour is intended to address international concerns and maintain Uzbekistan’s dominant role as the world’s second-largest cotton exporter. Of the 3.5 million tons of raw cotton grown annually, at least 1.5 million tons goes to export. Much of it is picked by hand.
Some local observers say the ban is already taking effect, noting a marked absence of children in some cotton-growing areas in the run-up to the harvest.
“There are law enforcement officers patrolling many of the fields to ensure the instructions are enforced,” said Mamurjon Azimov, a human rights activist from the Jizak region of central Uzbekistan.
The authorities appear to be intent on showing that the cotton harvest can be conducted without using children, and claim to have adequate numbers of cotton-harvesting machines.
Yet many farmers question whether this will be enough, and suspect that they will have to go back to the time-honoured tradition of recruiting schoolchildren and college students.
Farmers say that although they are technically independent, they are still bound to the state by a rigid system which requires them to grow a certain quota of cotton and deliver it to a government monopoly purchasing agency.
“We can’t pick the cotton we’ve grown unless we use children,” said Atanazar Allaberganov, a farmer from the northwestern region of Khorezm, explaining that this year’s crop had been planted in densely-packed rows 60 centimetres apart, whereas a harvesting machine needs a gap of 90 centimetres to pass between the rows.
The farmer said he knew of 300 under-age schoolchildren already working on cotton plantations in his immediate vicinity.
The reason the plants are so close together is the result of an earlier instruction from the authorities to maximise the yield. This year’s national production target has been set at 3.6 million tons.
Experts say child labour in Uzbekistan is unlikely to be eradicated as long as the authorities go on using the current heavy-handed approach to cotton production – imposing the “state order” quota system, enforcing it with tough penalties, and deploying police to ensure the harvest is gathered in.
Another obstacle is the lack of transparency in Uzbekistan, making it hard to measure the extent to which the ban will actually be enforced.
As Nadezhda Ataeva, head of the Paris-based Human Rights in Central Asia Association, pointed out, “The National Action Plan makes no provision for human rights activists and journalists to monitor its implementation, so there is every reason to believe that compulsory [child] labour will recur in the cotton sector.”
(NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service is resuming, covering only Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for the moment.)
