Despite strong condemnation of child labour the EU still grants Uzbekistan reduced cotton trading imports – leaving it to trade unions to fight for workers’ rights

Various campaigning organisations and non-governmental organisations estimate that between 1.5 and 2 million children, some as young as seven, are forced annually into the cotton fields of Uzbekistan. There they face 10-hour work days, exposure to harmful pesticides, and risk physical harm or expulsion from school if they fail to pick a quota of up to 100 pounds of raw cotton per day.

This is how a 14-year-old boy from the Kashkadaria province, quoted on antislavery.org, describes the situation: “We’re really afraid of getting expelled from school. Every September 2, the first day of school, the director warns us that if we don’t go out to pick cotton we might as well not come back to school. The school administration does everything to create the impression that the schoolchildren themselves are the ones who have decided to go out to the cotton fields.

“But just try to ‘voluntarily’ not go out to the harvest. We’re all forced to obey this unwritten law. And moreover, the only way to get cash is to go out and pick cotton. It’s painful to see how the kids knock themselves out in the cotton fields to earn this rotten money. Just think about it: in order to earn 50 sum – four US cents – a kid who is barely 14 has to bend down to the cotton bush over 50 times. And his earnings from a day of this work won’t even buy him a pair of ugly socks.”

After the United States and India, Uzbekistan is the thirds biggest cotton exporter in the world and the single biggest destination for Uzbek cotton is the European market.

The Uzbek government flatly denies all allegations of the use of child labour in the cotton fields. When invited to the International Trade Committee of the European Parliament on two occasions this year for an exchange of view on the matter, the Uzbek Embassy decided not to attend. In my view, the only possible interpretation of this uncooperative attitude is the dictatorial Uzbek government’s lack of convincing arguments.

In a statement, and a further attempt to whitewash their role in the use of child labour, they explained that on March 6 2009 Uzbekistan ratified the International Labour Organisation’s minimum age convention and on June 24 2008 Uzbekistan ratified the ILO’s worst forms of child labour convention. But at the same time the government refuses to allow access to an observers’ mission of the ILO into the country. This is truly a case as Shakespeare wrote of “words, words, mere words”.

Moreover, in order to hide the reality of child labour and other massive human rights violations that prevail under the dictatorship of President Karimov, over the last five years all the representative offices of human rights organisations and international media have been closed.

At its last plenary session, the European parliament voted on an interim report on a protocol that amends the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement in order to extend the provisions of the agreement between the EU and Uzbekistan to bilateral trade in textiles. This agreed that access of an ILO monitoring mission to Uzbekistan is a condition before any consent can be given.

This interim report was passed with a large majority, which is to be welcomed, and has partly been achieved due to the extremely effective campaigning work of NGOs. However, attempts by myself and other MEPs to strengthen the report by using clear and unambiguous language when it comes to the eradication of child labour as a precondition for any possible consent to the agreement did not find a majority.

Instead, a vague formulation which reads: “Concludes that parliament will only consider the consent if the ILO observers have been granted access by the Uzbek authorities to undertake close and unhindered monitoring and have confirmed that concrete reforms have been implemented and yielded substantial results in such a way that the practice of forced labour and child labour is effectively in the process of being eradicated at national, viloyat and local level” was adopted, which leaves more space for the Uzbek government to manoeuvre.

Despite strong condemnation from the European Union over the use of child slavery in Uzbek cotton production, the EU continues to allow the government of Uzbekistan to benefit from reduced trading tariffs under the General System of Preferences for its cotton imports.

I hold the EU and the European Commission in particular responsible for applying double standards in this regard. The trade union movement in Europe must also give real solidarity and support to the work of building genuinely independent trade unions in Uzbekistan to fight for workers’ rights and against child labour.

Paul Murphy is an Irish MEP and a member of the Confederal Group of the European United Left – Nordic Green Left

http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/1298/bitter-reality-of-child-labour-in-uzbekistan