In the underwear department of your favorite apparel store, it may seem like a simple choice – Fruit of the Loom or Hanes. But half a world away your decision could affect whether a child goes to school, or is marched off to cotton fields and put to work.
While many of her peers were enjoying summer vacation, 13-year-old Afiye was picking eggplants under a scorching sun in the fields of southern Turkey’s Adana Province.
After taking a PR battering recently about its ongoing use of children to harvest cotton, Uzbekistan is now contending with intensifying international scrutiny of its forced labor practices.
The European Union is mulling ways to expand its textile trade with Uzbekistan, a major cotton supplier. Rights activists are lobbying hard against the ratification of EU trade measures, asserting that adoption would encourage the continuing use of forced child labor in the Central Asian nation.
In a landmark statement coming from a European official, Markus Löning, Germany’s federal commissioner for human rights, has demanded that Uzbekistan cease using child labor in harvesting cotton, and has called for inspections to be carried out by the International Organization of Labor (ILO).
