The United States has lifted a ban on Uzbekistan cotton from entering the country, citing a significant reduction in the use of forced child labor during the cotton harvest.
This means cotton from Uzbekistan will no longer be on the US Department of Labor’s list of products that “might have been mined, produced, or manufactured by forced or indentured child labor.”
Uzbekistan’s foreign ministry celebrated the policy reversal. The cotton ban had been in place in 2010.
Radio Free Europe reports:
It said that following a review, the Labor Department, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security “have determined that the use of forced child labor in the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan has been significantly reduced to isolated incidents. As a result, these products no longer meet the conditions necessary for assignment to the list of the Executive Order.”
For years, rights watchdogs have been accusing Uzbek authorities of forcing children to pick cotton, one of the Central Asian country’s biggest exports. Uzbekistan for decades has mobilized students as well as staff at schools and medical clinics and hospitals to pick cotton.
In May 2018, President Shavkat Mirziyoev’s government issued a decree aimed at completely ending the practice of forced labor.Uzbekistan is the fifth largest cotton producer in the world.
It exports about 60 percent of its raw cotton to China, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Iran.
As reported by Trend, American officials made the policy decision after evaluating views from human rights organizations, including the international coalition Cotton Campaign and the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), as well as opinions from the Uzbekistan diplomatic mission in Washington DC.
Uzbekistan’s cotton industry generates nearly a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product, over $1 billion in annual revenue.
Source: FREEDOMUNITED
