Workers Rally Against Child Labor in Uzbekistan
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Outside the embassy of Uzbekistan today, nearly 100 union members and allies from the Washington, D.C., area rallied to show their support for Uzbek children subjected to child labor. Millions of children, some as young as age 7, could be subjected to long hours of labor in cotton fields this fall.
As young people across the United States have returned to school, children in Uzbekistan are being removed from their classes to pick cotton during the current harvest season. Every year, Uzbek state officials order millions of children, as young as 10 years old, and their teachers to leave school and harvest cotton under hazardous working conditions.
In a statement read on behalf of AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, Stan Gacek from the AFL-CIO International Affairs Department said forced child labor is in violation of not only international labor standards, but basic decency.
Uzbekistan is the sixth largest producer of cotton in the world, earning over $1 billion yearly, and the cotton picked by Uzbek children is processed into the clothes we buy in the United States. Where does this money go?
Fight Child Labor in Uzbekistan
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As the harvest season for cotton in Uzbekistan begins, 2 million Uzbek children, some as young as six or seven and ranging up to 15, will be forced to spend their days picking cotton instead of attending classes.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Labor Department included cotton from Uzbekistan on a list of goods produced by forced and child labor. Each year during the three-month harvest, Uzbek authorities shut down hundreds of schools, hospitals and public offices. Along with the children, thousands of teachers, doctors and public administrators are forced into the fields.
The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) has joined with AFT and a broad range of organizations in the United States and Central Asia to call for an end to forced child labor in Uzbekistan. You can act today to stop this shameful practice by signing a petition here.
All supporters who sign the petition by Oct. 2 will have their names put on a special cotton quilt that will be unveiled at a rally in front of the Uzbek embassy in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 14. To get more involved in this action, e-mail volunteer@ilrf.org.
