“The cotton curse”: forced labour in Central Asia
“The cotton curse”: How the Central Asian harvest season has brought misery
23.10.2025
Article published on the rus.azattyq.org website
The cotton industry, inherited by Central Asia from the Soviet era, has remained virtually unchanged in the more than three decades since the collapse of the USSR. Forced labour is still being used in the fields, and sometimes the harvest of white gold turns into a bloody one.
Uzbekistan
At the end of September, Uzbek’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, declared a ten-day emergency in order to organise this year’s harvest. Local officials began sending anyone they could lay their hands on into the fields – utility workers, school teachers, medical workers. “Every evening, the Nishan district (Kashkadarya oblast) khokim holds a meeting and asks the head of each State body “How many people has your organisation sent to pick cotton?”. Mirziyoyev has boasted about abolishing forced labour, but has yet again given instructions for an emergency headquarters to be established”, said one public sector employee. “We can’t seem to rid ourselves of the cotton curse!”.
Mirziyoyev, who came to power following the death of the republic’s first President Islam Karimov in 2016, repeatedly promised in his early years that the Government would not force its citizens to pick cotton. Special laws were drafted. In 2023, speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York, he declared that the use of forced and child labour on cotton plantations had been eliminated in his country.
However, since then, things have returned to normal. The words have changed but not their meaning: terms such as “voluntary participation”, “emergency headquarters” and “verbal orders” are now being used.
“I live in the Alat district of Bukhara oblast. Teachers, technical workers and school security guards are all picking cotton in our area. The order has come down “from on high”. People are told “If they come round to check up on you, just say that you agreed to help with the harvest of your own free will, or that you don’t work anywhere. This wasn’t the case last year. Today, everyone is talking about cotton and we’re already tired of it”, said a teacher at a school in Alat.
Cotton is one of the key crops in Uzbekistan’s agricultural sector. According to Government estimates, 875,000 hectares will be sewn this year. In an interview with the Uzbekistan 24 television channel, Abdurashid Isroilov, Director of the State Agricultural Support Fund, stated that a significant portion of the current crop are Chinese varieties which will require harvesting straight away. Perhaps this explains the reason for the “emergency”.
Despite online media reports of instances of forced labour, the State Labour Inspectorate has only uncovered a few dozen such cases. Officials reported that only 74 violations of the law have been recorded during the season.
However, experts are convinced that the number of cases is very much higher. The cotton sector in Central Asia has not been properly restructured, making a return to forced labour practices inevitable, according to Alisher Ilkhamov, founder of the UK-based research centre Central Asia Due Diligence.
“Responding to criticism of Uzbekistan from international organisations, Mirziyoyev finally acknowledged the problem and promised to resolve it. This was a decision of major significance. But ultimately, he simply increased cotton picking payments and ordered a halt to sending large numbers of civil servants, students and schoolchildren to harvest the crop. But the economic system is still the same and this regime of strictly-controlled management of the cotton sector inevitably, by its very nature, involves the use of coercion”, says Ilkhamov.
Coercion in Turkmenistan
Cotton is also grown in large quantities in Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and not without coercion. Turkmenistan’s annual cotton harvest plan is 1.25 million tonnes, a figure that has remained stable for several years. The country is among the world’s top ten largest producers, selling both raw cotton and finished products abroad – approximately 60% of textiles are exported. The main consumers are Turkey, Russia and China. Cotton fabrics are also exported to European countries.
Ashgabat is committed to the use of forced labour in the cotton sector and has no intention of abandoning its policy any time soon.
Radio Azatlyk, RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, produces a report each year on the mass deployment of public sector workers to the cotton fields. This year, say Azatlyk, farmers, day labourers and State employees have been joined in the fields by military personnel, ex-prisoners and citizens under temporary arrest (it is noteworthy that Azatlyk’s report coincided with the US State Department’s removal of Turkmenistan from its list of countries that promote the use of forced labour).
“This year in the Balkan velayat, healthcare, communications and transport workers, including taxi drivers, are being forcibly recruited to pick cotton at weekends. They work for free and receive nothing for the cotton they pick”, say Azatlyk.
International human rights organisations have been criticising Ashgabat’s policies for years, calling for an end to forced labour practices, including in the cotton sector.
Tajikistan
Several years ago, Tajikistan introduced an official ban on the use of schoolchildren to pick cotton, with the Ministry of Education even stating that such a practice violates their rights and interferes with their education. However, this year, there have been reports that students, teachers and schoolchildren have been sent into the fields in the south-west part of the country despite the current ban. Sources close to RFE/RL’s Tajik Service Ozodi say that the khukumat (a local government body) operating in the Kushoniyon district has ordered dozens of educational institutions to send their students and staff into the fields. The wording is a standard one “during their free time”. According to Ozodi, the instruction was passed down to schools, universities and public sector bodies.
The local television channel Khatlon reported that more than a thousand students from Bokhtar State University and other colleges went voluntarily to harvest the crop. However, two university lecturers who wished to remain anonymous, told Ozodi that participation was made compulsory for them.
“A directive was issued stating that all students and teachers must go to the fields on Saturdays and Sundays. We could get into trouble if we don’t”, one of them said.
How was Central Asian cotton boycotted and why was it ineffective?
Campaigns by human rights groups against the use of forced and child labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton sector led to a boycott of Uzbek cotton in 2006. At the time, 331 brands, including Adidas, Zara, C&A, Gap Inc, H&M, Levi Strauss & Co, Tesco and Walmart, supported the call of the international Cotton Campaign coalition.
In 2022, the Cotton Campaign announced it would end its boycott. The coalition explained that its decision was based on the findings of a report by the Berlin-based Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights, which found no evidence of systematic forced labour during the 2021 cotton harvest.
In 2010, the United States blacklisted products made from Tajik cotton. A few years later, Turkmen cotton was also banned.
In 2016, global brands expressed concern about the use of forced labour in Turkmenistan. The Swedish company H&M, Europe’s largest clothing retailer, even refused to buy Turkmen cotton.
Amid concerns about the use of forced labour, in May 2018, the US Customs Service banned the import of all types of cotton from Turkmenistan, as well as goods from any country that are produced using Turkmen material. The ban remains in force.
Why has the boycott of Central Asian cotton failed to address the problem of forced and child labour in the region’s cotton fields and why has it been ineffective?
“Previously in the 2000s and early 2010s, citizen mobilisation was massive, with public servants, students, doctors and teachers being sent en masse to pick cotton. This provided an opportunity to collect evidence, photographs and testimonies to be used to develop an international campaign.
Now, Governments, especially in Uzbekistan and partly in Tajikistan, have switched to other methods: farmers’ dependence on State procurement quotas, workers’ debt and administrative reliance, as well commercialisation under the control of affiliated companies. As a result, forced labour is disguised as an economic necessity and traditional mechanisms of exposure no longer work.
The Cotton Campaign, which played a decisive role during the boycott of Uzbek cotton, has entered a “post-victory” phase after the official lifting of the boycott in 2022, said Nadezhda Ataeva, Head of the France-based body Human Rights in Central Asia in an interview with Azatlyk Asia.
Another problem is that supply chains have become more complex, making it difficult to determine the cotton’s origin. “The boycott used to work because cotton was exported in its raw form and brands could refuse to buy it. Now, Uzbekistan process nearly all its cotton domestically, while Turkmenistan and Tajikistan export through third countries – Turkey, China and the UAE. Finished products – fabrics, yarn and ready-made clothing – lose their geographical origin”, says the human rights activist.
Ataeva also believes that the fight against forced and child labour in cotton fields requires accountability, not boycotts. “Modern tools for combating exploitation should instead be based on demands for corporate transparency: international sanctions against State-owned companies that abuse labour, the inclusion of workers’ rights in trade agreements (GSP + EU-CA) and independent auditing and certification”, she said.
Ataeva says that human rights activists have nevertheless managed to create a “critical vulnerability syndrome” among authorities due to the practice of forced labour.
“In Uzbekistan, human rights defenders have succeeded in instilling a fear of criticism in the regime. In Turkmenistan, criticism is not tolerated at all. In Tajikistan, the authorities have learned to imitate a reaction to criticism without changing its nature. The syndrome of the Government’s unwillingness to listen to criticism exists in Central Asia but in different forms: from fear of reputational damage to complete immunity”, said Ataeva.
