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No less than 200,000 children are forced to pick cotton by the Uzbek government, estimates the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF). Now major UK retailer Tesco has become the first to follow EJF's advice and ban all Uzbek cotton from its clothing range, homeware range and corporate purchases.
A Tesco spokesperson told SmartPlanet: "We realise that child labour is a complex issue with many causes, which we acknowledge are hard to effect individually. However, the use of organised and forced child labour is completely unacceptable and leads us to conclude that while these practices persist in Uzbekistan, we cannot support the use of cotton from Uzbekistan in our clothing."
A complete boycott might sound a little drastic to many consumers, but unfortunately this situation of forced child labour cannot be solved by, for example, going Fairtrade. EJF told SmartPlanet that there aren't any Fairtrade plantations in Uzbekistan at the moment and the fact that the Uzbek government owns the cotton plantations makes it difficult -- if not impossible -- to make them Fairtrade (Fairtrade standards prescribe that cotton pickers should be organised in either a cooperative or a trade union).
As Uzbekistan is the world's third largest exporter of cotton and Tesco is the world's third largest retailer, we're talking big-scale changes here. Tesco has also announced it's going to get more transparent with regards to its clothing and textiles processes by implementing a system to check its cotton supply chains.
EJF urges other retailers to follow Tesco's example to eventually put an end to what EJF's Steve Trent calls "The Uzbek regime’s abusive cotton industry, which operates within a framework of totalitarian control." He says: "We are urging all retailers to follow Tesco’s move to send a message to the government of Uzbekistan that its flagrant human-rights abuses cannot continue. Tesco has proven that the sourcing of cotton fibre and the tracking of supply chains are entirely possible and there is no excuse for all other retailers of cotton goods not to pledge a commitment to do the same."
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