Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) – Uzbekistan intends to remove cotton boycott. Participants of the webinar “After the Cotton: Lessons Learned and Prospects for Uzbekistan”, organized yesterday at the Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations, noted this.

The event was attended by the leadership of the Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations, representatives of the ILO, the American Council on International Business (USCIB), the US Department of Labor, the American Association of Clothing and Shoes Manufacturers (AAFA), the Cotton Campaign international coalition, and civic activists.

On the agenda were issues such as lessons learned from the cotton season in Uzbekistan for 2019 and further steps to remove the boycott from Uzbek textiles.

In particular, the first deputy minister of employment and labor relations Erkin Mukhitdinov in his presentation highlighted five main lessons: any form of forced labor has a negative impact on the development of the country’s textile industry, as well as the image of Uzbekistan; the government of the republic must apply strict measures to implement measures to eradicate forced labor; eradicating the deep roots of forced labor will require decisive and targeted measures; the cotton industry is a critical source of employment for many citizens; the role of civil society activists is important in the fight against forced labor.

At the same time, E. Mukhitdinov said that forced labor is unacceptable in the economy of Uzbekistan and the country intends to resolve this issue. In particular, a four-way cooperation mechanism was proposed to American partners with the participation of the government, international buyers, local producers and representatives of civil society.

In an interview with Dunyo, the First Deputy Minister said that the four-way cooperation will help to establish trustful contacts between all parties involved.

- Cotton Campaign and our other partners are not against cooperation in this format. Four-sided cooperation will allow creating a platform thanks to which representatives of international brands will be able to come and see Uzbekistan’s commitment to eradicate forced labor in the fields, he stressed.

It should be noted that according to the report of the ILO Third Party Monitoring Project (TPM) in 2019, 1.7 million people worked in the fields of Uzbekistan. In 2015, this figure was approximately 3.2 million people.

The webinar participants welcomed the achievements of our country in eradicating systematic and systematic child and forced labor in the cotton industry of Uzbekistan, as well as the growth in 2019. However, representatives of Cotton Campaign and the American Association of Clothing and Shoes (AAFA) pointed to work that the country has yet to do in the cotton season of 2020. Among them are not the recurrence of cases of forced labor during the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan in 2019, as well as the registration of independent NGOs.

“Undoubtedly, Uzbekistan has achieved significant results, but US law does not differentiate a single or a thousandth case,” said Nate Herman, senior vice president of supply chain for the American Association of Clothing and Shoes, referring to section 1307 of the US Code, according to which “all goods , produced by a foreign country in part or in whole using forced labor, are not entitled to enter any of the US ports ... ”

Along with this, the representative of AAFA noted that the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as other international processes, had a negative impact on the US textile industry. In this regard, in his opinion, great opportunities are opening up for Uzbekistan.

It is also worth noting that the TPM monitoring for 2019 took place thanks to the work of local human rights defenders. Jonas Astrup in an interview with “Dunyo” reported that these people are not connected with government work: “This increases the role of monitoring. Moreover, the state did not impede the work of human rights defenders. In other words, we did not observe cases of harassment of human rights defenders.”

Shukhrat Ganiev, a civil society activist in Uzbekistan who participated in the webinar, announced his intention to monitor - regardless of how the international community or ministry is set up - until the last case of forced labor is eradicated. “Last year’s monitoring showed that we can conduct monitoring ourselves by the local civil society and intend to do it this season as well,” he added.

Finally, the main areas of development in the cotton season of 2020 were the criminalization of forced labor, the abolition of the state cotton order system, the registration of NGOs, the continued privatization of the cotton industry in Uzbekistan, and the increase in the control capacity of inspectors.