Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Eradication of Forced Labour - Striking Example of Political Will


Sun 26 Feb 2023 | 07:23 PM
President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev
President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev
Opinion

In recent years, thanks to the strong political will of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, a completely new system of ensuring human rights and freedoms has been created in our country on the basis of large-scale reforms carried out to glorify human dignity and comprehensively protect their interests.

At the same time, the work on improving national legislation, bringing them into line with international standards, reforming agriculture and other sectors, the widespread application of market principles, mechanization of the industry, decent payment were key factors m prevention of child and forced labour in our country.

One of the achievements of Uzbekistan over the past five years is the complete abolition of forced labour.

If we look at the results of the International Labour Organization's Third Party Monitoring report (2019), it shows that since 2013 Uzbekistan has been achieving a gradual progress in eradication of forced labour. For instance, in 2015-2016 Cotton Campaign forced labour was 14 percent, from year to year this figure had gradually decreased to 4 percent in 2020 and reached to 1 percent in 2021.

Moreover, the government intensified law enforcement efforts in 2019. The number of staff of the Labour Inspectorate contributing to compliance during the harvest doubled from 200 to 400. Ike Labour Inspectorate investigated 1,282 forced labour cases during the 2019 cotton harvest.

Furthermore, ILO monitors confirmed that wages had increased compared to the previous harvest which was another effective mechanism to eradicate the issue. Generally, cotton pickers received their wages on time and in full.

There is no exaggeration to say that the abolition of the global boycott against Uzbek cotton by the International Coalition “Cotton Campaign” was a vivid example of the effectiveness of large-scale reforms. 

Edited by Nada Mustafa