The International Labour Organization (ILO) demanded once more that forced labor by children and adults be stopped in Uzbekistan, and requested that its observers be allowed to inspect this yearΆs harvesting of cotton.
The ILOΆs Committee on the Application of Standards held hearings in Geneva in which labor representatives, employers, and government representatives demanded that the government of Uzbekistan pass immediate and significant measures to stop the exploitation of children and adults in UzbekΆs cotton industry.
The Head of the Human Rights Society, Jezgulik Vasilya Inoyatova, supported this demand.
“The ILOΆs recommendations are based on facts, which include the deaths of Navruz Musinov, Igor Yachkevskiy, Aziza Bakhtijerova and Umid during the 2012 harvest.”
The participants in the ILO hearing stressed the fact that Uzbekistan has a formalized structure of forced child labor. The government has forced not just the adults, but also children as young as ten into the fields for weeding.
Human rights groups reported that the Deputy Administrator in Namanganskaya region beat seven farmers because they planted onions and not cotton on their fields.
Government employees, medical and education workers, are being forced to work in the fields this year just as they were last year.
Speaking at the ILOΆs hearing, the representative from Indonesia stated that forced child labor supported by government is a major violation of international law and treaties, which naturally leads to the situation where goods produced by child labor are sold throughout the world.
At the hearings, Uzbek ILO representatives denied once more that child labor was used during the 2012 harvest.
The same Uzbek representatives simply ignored inquiries on the forcing of government employees to work the cotton fields.
Members of International Federation of Labor Unions and International Organization of Employers stated that claims by the Uzbek government are not substantiated by facts and contradict reports of independent human rights groups.
The International Organization of EmployersΆ delegates pointed out that if the Uzbekistan government was not using forced labor they would have nothing to fear from ILO inspections.
