BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Uzbek cotton fields still using child labour - The Diigo Meta page

• 11 Nov 09
  

  Arabica Robusta

  cotton industry uzbekistan child labor

• 

  Ed Webb

  news bbc rights children childlabour Uzbekistan cotton monoculture

  • The BBC Uzbek Service has found that schoolchildren are still being sent out to work in Uzbekistan's vast cotton fields , despite government promises to stop using child labour during the harvest.

    The BBC is not allowed to report from Uzbekistan.

    But in telephone conversations with Uzbeks in the countryside, it is clear the government seems to have broken its promise.

    "Everybody is out in the cotton fields, including schoolchildren,"

  • streets are festooned with slogans dating back to the Soviet era calling on everyone to help with the harvest.

    
    
    
    
    
    <!-- S IBOX -->
    
    
    
    

    My daughter is anaemic and has been taken to a cotton-growing area far away with her college Uzbek mother

    
    
    <!-- E IBOX -->
    
    
    
    
    
    

    People told the BBC Uzbek Service that government activists with loudspeakers were driving around reminding people to do their bit.

  • 4 more annotations...
  • • "It's a special season, like the holy month of Ramadan,"

    • "Fourteen- and 15-year-old school pupils have been taken to the cotton fields," says Bakhtiyar Hamrayev, a human rights activist, describing the situation in the central Jizzakh region.

      "In rural areas, children as young as 11 or 12 have been forced to leave their classrooms and help to pick cotton in nearby farms."

    • Many Uzbek farmers do not want to use child labour, but they are powerless to negotiate the price paid by the state and the extremely low wages on offer put adults off picking cotton.

      "The government forces us to produce cotton while we want to plant fruits or vegetables," says one Uzbek farmer.

      "And again it's the government who decides the price for our cotton and who decides who will pick the cotton."

    • The European Union has just ended a sanctions regime against Uzbekistan, citing the ratification of agreements against child labour as one area of progress.

      But an EU spokesman said the EU would be monitoring the situation on the ground closely.

Would you like to comment?

Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.