UZBEKISTAN: INFORMATION ON FORCED LABOR AND CHILD

UNCLAS TASHKENT 000632 SIPDIS DEPT FOR SCA/CEN, DRL, AND DEPT OF LABOR DOL/ILAB FOR RACHEL RIGBY, DRL/ILCSR FOR MARK MITTELHAUSER, AND G/TIP FOR STEVE STEINER E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ELAB ECON EIND ETRD PGOV PHUM PREL SOCI UZ SUBJECT: UZBEKISTAN: INFORMATION ON FORCED LABOR AND CHILD LABOR FOR MANDATORY CONGRESSIONAL REPORTING REQUIREMENTS REF: STATE 43120 ¶1. Summary: Per reftel request, post is providing the following information on the use of child labor and forced labor in the production of specific goods in Uzbekistan. Numerous credible sources report the widespread use of child labor in Uzbekistan during the annual cotton harvest, a practice that dates back to the Soviet era. There are no reliable figures on the number of children involved in the cotton harvest, which is thought to vary considerable from region to region and year to year. International organizations report a modest level of cooperation with the government on efforts to combat the use of child labor. There are also reports of the use of forced adult labor in the cotton harvest, but they are mostly anecdotal and the practice appears to be less widespread than the use of child labor. Many adults, especially rural women, pick cotton as paid laborers, and the salaries they earn represent a significant portion of their yearly incomes. Some non-governmental organizations have reported on the use of child labor in the production of other products, including silk and rice, but further investigation is necessary to establish the credibility of such reports. End summary. USE OF CHILD AND FORCED LABOR IN UZBEKISTAN -------------- ¶2. GOOD: Cotton TYPE OF EXPLOITATION: Child and Forced Labor SOURCES OF INFORMATION: - International Crisis Group, The Curse of Cotton: Central Asia's Destructive Monoculture, 2005. - Uzbekistan, Human Rights Report, U.S. State Department, ¶2008. - Uzbekistan, Worst Forms of Child Labor Report, Department of Labor, 2007. - Tashkent Center for Social Research "Tahlil," "Child Labor in Uzbekistan," 2002. - Conversations with representatives of non-governmental and international organizations - Reports of human rights and non-governmental organizations (not for public citation) - Internal reports of international organizations (not for public citation) NARRATIVE -------------- ¶3. The compulsory mobilization of students for the annual fall cotton harvest in Uzbekistan is a long-standing practice dating back to the Soviet era. During the latest harvest in the fall of 2007, schools closed for approximately one month in many rural areas to allow children to pick cotton. Although a majority of students involved are older than 15, non-governmental organizations and journalists continue to document cases of children younger than 15 participating in the harvest. There were some reports in previous years that children have been forced to spray harmful chemicals, with no protection, and to endure poor living conditions on farms located far from their homes and families. The children are usually, but not always, paid a per kilo rate for the cotton they pick. ¶4. Knowledgeable sources report that many schools across the country are required by provincial governments to provide students for the harvest. According to those sources, schools try to fulfill their quotas using high school-age students, but they occasionally conscript younger students if there are not enough older students to meet their quotas. Multiple knowledgeable sources report that the number of students involved in the cotton harvest varies considerably from region to region and year to year, though generally, greater numbers of students are conscripted from rural regions. ¶5. The cotton harvest each year is carried out in approximately three stages over a relatively short period of time, usually one to two months. During the first stage, cotton is most plentiful in the fields and farmers have no difficulties hiring adult workers to pick the cotton based on a per kilo rate. However, in the second, and especially in the third stage, less cotton is available for picking, and it is during these periods that child labor is used most prevalently to pick the remaining cotton. ¶6. There is less information available on the total number of adults who are forced to participate in the annual cotton harvest each year, and the issue of forced adult labor has attracted much less attention than the use of child labor. What information that does exist is anecdotal and suggests that many teachers (along with their students) and other state-employees in certain regions are forced to pick cotton from a week up to a month each year. Generally, adults are forced to pick cotton for a shorter period of time than children, and they are usually paid a per kilo rate. ¶7. A much larger number of adults, mostly poor rural women, pick cotton as paid laborers. These individuals are heavily dependent upon the income they earn during the cotton season. Based on survey data, one economist estimated that laborers could earn as much as 1 million soums (770 dollars) over the course of a season, a considerable amount for rural Uzbekistan. However, others estimate that laborers earn only about 150 dollars a season. In contrast, cotton pickers are paid approximately 200 dollars a month in Kazakhstan, which in turn, appears to attract many adult laborers from Uzbekistan. ¶8. There are many factors driving the use of child labor in the annual cotton harvest. Uzbekistan has a high unemployment rate, particularly among young males, a youth (under 18) population accounting for 40 percent of the population, and a per capita income of less than 2,200 dollars a year. As of 2005, 64 percent of the country's population lives in rural areas and about 32 percent of the workforce is employed in the agricultural sector. Cotton remains an important sector of the economy, accounting for roughly 13 percent of GDP and around 25 percent of foreign exchange revenues. Uzbekistan is the world's third largest cotton exporter, behind the U.S. and India, contributing between four and ten percent of internationally traded cotton. At a family level, harvesting is an important money earner - and for many their only cash income. The migration of large numbers of adults, mainly to Kazakhstan and Russia, where they receive higher wages, is another factor - leaving a vacuum in Uzbekistan's agricultural labor force which students and some adults are forced to fill (meanwhile, the country's population is becoming increasingly dependent on foreign remittances, which some have estimated to be as high as 3 billion dollars per year). As a long-standing practice dating from the Soviet era, the use of child labor during the cotton harvest is widely tolerated by society. Probably the most important factor is the continuance of the quota system for cotton production. While virtually all farms in Uzbekistan are now classified as private, they are still tied to the state-order system. Farmers are required to both seed a certain amount of their land with cotton each year and produce a certain quantity for state purchase. As adult labor is often scarce, especially in the second and third stages of the harvest, farmers and provincial officials resort to conscripting students to fulfill their quotas. ¶9. The transition from Soviet-era large-scale collective farming to more market-orientated, smaller-scale family farming has also been a fact in the use of younger children to pick cotton. While the government has no plans to scrap its quota system anytime soon, according to an international organization, it appears that private farmers are beginning to have more freedom in deciding who will help pick their cotton and at what rates. The international organization predicted that child labor in the cotton sector may be increasingly mobilized not via schools but at the farm level, representing a new type of "voluntary" child labor within the extended family. According to the organization, this raises the possibility that the government may become more proactive in prosecuting child labor cases, given that it is politically easier to prosecute an individual family than a government school. Nevertheless, a recent statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs argues that children helping out on the family farm is legitimate, suggesting that the government may continue to tolerate the practice. INCIDENCE -------------- ¶10. There are no reliable statistics for the extent of child and forced adult labor during the annual cotton harvest. Recent estimates by non-governmental organizations for the number of school-age children involved in cotton picking each year range from tens of thousands to up to two million. Non-governmental organizations, including those which estimated that between hundreds of thousands and two million students picked cotton in each year, explained to poloff that they developed their estimates by conducting interviews with individuals in one or two provinces of Uzbekistan (usually in areas where the use of child labor was most prevalent) and then generalized their findings for the country as a whole. But as the prevalence of child labor during the cotton harvest varies widely from region to region, such estimates are not reliable. ¶11. According to a knowledgeable source, the Trade Union of Uzbekistan (a quasi-governmental organization) estimated in 2008 that 1.64 million school-age children were involved in agricultural work, including cotton picking, representing 45 percent of the total number of Uzbek schoolchildren in grades 5 to 11. In contrast, an international organization conducted a Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) in 2006 which found that 11 percent of children aged 5-14 in Tashkent and an average of 2 percent of children nationwide were involved in child labor activities. The survey demonstrated a sharp decline in the prevalence of child labor since 2000, when the last MICS survey showed that 23 percent of children 5 - 14 were involved in child labor. However, the survey was conducted in March and May 2006, and thus did not capture the use of children during the fall cotton harvest period. ¶12. The age of schoolchildren involved in the annual cotton harvest is also unclear and most likely varies considerably by both region and year to year. In a 2005 report, the International Crisis Group (ICG) found that children as young as seven were involved in the harvest, though it concluded that most of the schoolchildren were over ten years old. Multiple knowledgeable sources have reported to poloff that in recent years, most schoolchildren involved in the harvest are over 15 years old, though schoolchildren as young as 11 continue to be used in certain regions of the country. ¶13. International organizations are currently negotiating with the government over conducting a more thorough assessment of the use of child labor during next fall's cotton harvest. The sides have not yet reached an agreement. International organizations believe that conducting a proper assessment is one of the most important steps that can be taken to combat the problem. They also argue that conducting an assessment would be in the government's best interest, as it is likely to dispel some of the more exaggerated claims of non-governmental organizations over the number of schoolchildren who participate in the cotton harvest each year, or at least to provide sounder understanding of the problem and a way forward to a viable solution. ¶14. The government first publicly acknowledged the existence of child labor in Uzbekistan in 2006. International organizations continue to report that officials are reluctant to discuss the issue in public, but speak more openly in private. Based on recent statements, the government's position appears to be that child involvement in cotton picking may or may not be widespread, but it is not forced by the government and does not contradict national laws and international norms. Officials routinely claim that children are not conscripted to pick cotton, but rather freely decide to help their parents on private farms. EFFORTS TO COMBAT CHILD LABOR AND FORCED LABOR -------------- - ¶15. The government has adopted laws and policies to protect children from exploitation during the cotton harvest, but it does not implement them effectively. The national labor code establishes the minimum working age at 16 and provides that work must not interfere with the studies of those under 18. The law establishes a right to a part-time job beginning at age 14, and children with permission from their parents may work a maximum of 24 hours per week when school is not in session and 12 hours per week when school is in session. Children between the ages of 16 and 18 may work 36 hours per week while school is not in session and 18 hours per week while school is in session. Prior to employment, children under 18 years must undergo a medical examination to establish their suitability for their chosen work and must repeat the examination at the employer's expense once a year until they become 18. A 2001 government decree prohibits those under age 18 from engaging in jobs with unhealthy working conditions, including manual cotton harvesting. Furthermore, as a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the government is obligated to protect its children "from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health of physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development." In regards to forced adult labor, the constitution and law prohibit forced or compulsory labor, except as legal punishment, such as for robbery, fraud or tax evasion. ¶16. Punishments and enforcement appear to be effective deterrents to child labor in the formal sector, but less so in the family-based and agricultural sectors. The law does not provide jurisdiction for inspectors from the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection to focus on child labor enforcement. Instead, the Prosecutor General and the Ministry of Interior's criminal investigators are responsible for the enforcement of child labor laws. Authorities did not formally investigate or punish violations related to the cotton harvest, and there were no reports of inspections resulting in prosecutions or administrative sanctions. Enforcement was lacking due in part to long-standing societal acceptance of child labor as a method of cotton harvesting. ¶17. International organizations have reported cooperation with the government in taking some steps to combat child labor. In 2005, the International Labor Organization's (ILO) International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC) began a regional project to take action against the worst forms of child labor. In 2006, ILO-IPEC launched a social dialogue process on child labor through the creation of a multi-agency government working group that included: UNICEF, Cabinet of Ministers Social Complex, Ministry of Labor, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Public Education, Ministry of Higher and Specialized Education, National Human Rights Center, Children's Fund, and trade unions. In consultation with the multiagency working group, the Cabinet of Ministers in 2007 adopted a four-year national action plan (2007 - 2011) on securing child welfare in Uzbekistan. In line with the national action plan, the government in 2008 ratified ILO Convention 138 on minimum age of employment and ILO Convention 182 on the worst forms of child labor. In January 2008, the Uzbek government also adopted a wide-ranging law "On the Guarantees of the Rights of the Child." In accordance with the national action plan, the government in 2007 implemented a transition from 9-year to 12-year mandatory free secondary education, which includes vocational education. By lengthening the term of mandatory education, the government seeks to keep children out of the labor market until they reach 17 or 18 and to provide them with marketable vocation skills by the time they finish school. ¶18. Other elements of the national action plan that are in the process of being implemented or have yet to be implemented include: the establishment of a child labor monitoring system; skills training for at-risk children and children who dropped out of the education system; capacity building for law enforcement on prevention of the worst forms of child labor; regular assessment and studies on the use of child labor; child labor roundtables with representation from the government and international organizations; establishment of a new child rights ombudsman position in the Uzbek government; and revising current agricultural practices. ¶19. In the past year, government officials have participated in several trainings on child labor organized by the ILO-IPEC project. In 2007, ILO conducted a "training of trainers" on basic principles of occupational health and safety for over 80 government employees, including Ministry of Labor inspectors, doctors, regional trade union officials, and Association of Farmers representatives. The training emphasized that children should not be involved in any labor activities potentially detrimental to their health. The trainers then shared what they learned with over 500 farmers in all provinces of Uzbekistan. They also helped establish labor representatives on farms, who will oversee the occupational safety and health of all agricultural workers and would monitor and seek to prevent the use of child labor. Over the past year, ILO also has worked with juvenile delinquency officers in order to educate them and lower school dropout rates. ILO prepared a new manual for juvenile delinquency officers, which included information on the worst forms of child labor, and conducted a "training of trainers" for 16 individuals. Those trainers subsequently provided trainings for 630 juvenile delinquency officers in six different provinces. With ILO cooperation, the government in 2007 started an education campaign through Mahallas, a pre-Soviet system of neighborhood-based management and social provision, to eliminate hazardous working conditions for minors and set up local monitoring mechanisms. ¶20. International organizations continue to promote alternatives to child labor in their interactions with the government. The ILO representative in Tashkent promotes the use of "seasonal workforce cooperatives" during the cotton harvest, which would be made up of unemployed laborers (ILO estimates that two million people were left unemployed after the privatization of large collective farms following independence). The cooperatives would work throughout the year, and would be involved in harvesting, seeding, weeding, and the improvement of irrigation systems. According to the ILO, the idea has received support from the Association of Farmers (a quasi-governmental body). Another idea being pursued by the ILO representative in Tashkent is collaborating with cotton farmers who do not use child labor to share their best practices with other farmers. ¶21. Human rights activists and some international organizations continue to call for a boycott of Uzbek cotton because of the use of child labor. In the past year, several large international companies, including Tesco, Debenhams, C&A, H&M, M&S, Matalan and smaller companies in Finland and Latvia have announced plans to boycott Uzbek cotton. We understand that Wal-Mart may be considering a similar step. International organizations working inside of Uzbekistan doubt that a boycott is the right approach to take to combat child labor. They argue that a boycott would mostly hurt rural families in Uzbekistan, which are heavily dependent upon income earned from the cotton harvests and could drive some children into even worst forms of child labor, including trafficking-in-persons and child prostitution. International organizations also express concern that a boycott of Uzbek cotton could impact the livelihoods of populations engaged in the production of textiles in other developing countries, including China, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. ¶22. International organizations also note that enforcing a boycott of cotton fiber from Uzbekistan would be difficult. While full supply chain traceability is technically possible, it would be resource intensive, difficult to verify and potentially very disruptive for textile producers located in other countries. Some of the human rights activists calling for a boycott recognize that enforcing it would be difficult, but they primarily see a boycott as a means of applying pressure on the government to implement broader political reforms. ¶23. Instead of a boycott, international organizations in Uzbekistan argue, and we agree, that positive engagement with the government and encouragement is the most effective and beneficial way forward. They believe that child labor in Uzbekistan can be effectively eliminated within the context of land, procurement, agricultural, and wage reform. Eventually, these organizations would like to see child labor replaced with adult labor. However, these organizations note that the government must continue to follow through on its recent commitments and fully implement the ILO conventions. They believe that the next six months offers the government a window to put its commitments into action before the next harvesting season begins in September 2008. ¶24. Several human rights organizations also have argued that an alternative to child labor is the greater mechanization of the cotton harvest. These organizations incorrectly claim that the World Bank supports mechanization as an alternative to child labor. According to several international organizations that have studied the issue, mechanization of the cotton harvest is unsuitable for Uzbekistan for several reasons, including the high unemployment rate in the country, the high cost of mechanization, and the fact that cotton harvested by machines is worth significantly less on international markets than cotton picked by hand. According to a survey commissioned by an international organization, many rural laborers are also against mechanization, because they fear that they will lose their jobs picking cotton, and along with it, a significant portion of their annual income. OTHER GOODS -------------- ¶25. There has been some reporting of the use of child labor in the production of other goods in Uzbekistan, including silk in the Ferghana Valley and Bukhara province and rice in Karakalpakstan. In 2008, one non-governmental organization reported that children aged 7 to 14 raised silk cocoons at their schools in five districts of Bukhara province, while another non-governmental organization and independent journalists reported similar practices in the Ferghana Valley. In contrast to the use of child labor for cotton picking, the use of child labor in the production of silk appears to be much less widespread and involves far fewer students. More research and investigation is required to establish the credibility of such reports. ¶26. Although the prevalence of child labor in the agricultural sector is high, traditional child labor concerns in the manufacturing sector are not an issue. The massive constriction of the manufacturing sector following independence left large swathes of the Uzbek adult population without employment, ensuring that they would be first in line for the new manufacturing jobs. NORLAND