Human rights has been a tricky issue with Uzbekistan. And the US State Department’s 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report, published last month, confirms this once more. However, it does note the efforts made by Tashkent to reduce forced child labor. These efforts have prompted the US government to promote Uzbekistan from Tier III to Tier II on its watch list. This move has stunned the Cotton Campaign advocacy group. Cotton Campaign, whose aim is to end forced child and adult labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry, feels that the upgrade lets Tashkent off the hook.

Nadejda Ataeva, President of Association for Human Rights in Central Asia, feels the US had successfully sent a message to Uzbekistan authorities that forced labour of millions of its citizens was cost-free. In a letter to US Secretary of State John Kerry, the group has said, that the country’s government mobilised more than a million of its own citizens to harvest cotton last year and began this year by mobilising thousands more to prepare the fields for the upcoming harvest.

As per ‘Trafficking in Persons Report’, decreased reliance on children has resulted in the increasing forcible mobilisation of the adult population. The US State Department report said that refusal to work puts holdouts at risk of losing their jobs or social benefits. Private companies are pressured into enlisting their employees on pain of being subjected to punitive inspections.

The sector has undergone great reforms and changes have been effected primarily in output. The industry has tried to meet the growing demand for refined goods instead of raw material that Uzbekistan previously churned out. The group urged US officials to stress American companies operating in Uzbekistan the importance of fulfilling their human rights due diligence responsibilities, including by declining to contribute to the cotton harvest.