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Brands to continue boycotting cotton from Uzbekistan

Around 100 North American and European brands, who participated in the US-based NGO Cotton Campaign, signed up for the Responsible Sourcing Network’s Cotton Pledge. The pledge requires these brands to boycott cotton from Uzbekistan. Almost all western brands are signatories.

These brands are protesting against the state-imposed system of forced labor, including children taken out of schools to harvest cotton, which has been in force since the days of the Soviet Union. The new President, Shavkat Mirziyoyev had promised far reaching reforms. But a report by the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights, which monitored the 2017 harvest, found evidence that state-sponsored forced labor continues, including in World Bank-funded cotton projects, contrary to the bank’s loan agreements.

Bennett Freeman, a co-founder of the Cotton Campaign and former Senior Vice-President for Calvert Investments, last month led a delegation of human rights, labor groups and supply chain specialists to Uzbekistan, and presented Uzbek government agencies with a roadmap for eliminating the systematic use of forced labor, starting with this year’s upcoming cotton harvest.

 

 
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