http://www.laborrights.org/sites/default/files/publications-and-resources/UzbekCottonFall08Report.pdf
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Initiative of a group of Uzbek human rights activists and researchers in partnership
with the International Labor Rights Forum
“We Live Subject to their Orders”:
A Three?Province Survey of Forced Child Labor in
Uzbekistan’s 2008 Cotton Harvest
Tashkent – New York, 2009
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Table of contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3
INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………5
BACKGROUND………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..5
METHODOLOGY ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..9
CHILDREN’S WORK ON THE 2008 HARVEST…………………………………………………………………………………….10
‘FIRST WE FORBADE THE CHILDREN FROM GOING OUT INTO THE FIELDS, AND THEN WE CHASED THEM OUT THERE TO
PICK COTTON’ ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………10
CHAIN OF COMMAND …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….13
COERCION……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………15
CONDITIONS IN THE FIELDS …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….20
CONSEQUENCES ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………24
SOCIAL ATTITUDES ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….25
CONCLUSIONS…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….27
APPENDIX: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..29
QUESTIONNAIRE FOR INTERVIEWING SCHOOLCHILDREN………………………………………………………………………………29
RESOLUTION OF THE CABINET OF MINISTERS, NO 207 ………………………………………………………………………………..31
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Executive Summary
Uzbekistan is the world’s sixth largest producer of cotton, and the third largest exporter. For
decades, it has used the forced labor of its schoolchildren starting in the early primary grades, college
and university students, and civil servants, to harvest that cotton by hand. Unlike child labor in
agricultural sectors in some other countries, this practice is organized and controlled by the central
government. Each fall, shortly after the start of the school year, the government orders schools to close
and school administrators to send the children out to the fields, where they remain until the cotton
harvest is brought in. The current report is based on seventy?two interviews in three different provinces
with participants in the fall 2008 harvest. Continue reading »