New Independent Reporting Reveals Ongoing Systematic Forced Labor and Corruption in Turkmenistan Cotton Harvest
ILO to Review Turkmenistan for Compliance with International Law Prohibiting Forced Labor
Geneva/Washington, D.C., June 12, 2023—Governments, companies, and workers’ organizations should take action to press Turkmenistan to end forced labor and protect fundamental labor rights, said the Cotton Campaign, a global coalition dedicated to ending forced labor and promoting decent work for Central Asian cotton workers. The call comes after a new report from independent Turkmen rights groups, released today, documents widespread, systematic forced labor, underpinned by endemic corruption, in Turkmenistan’s annual cotton harvest. The report was released on the same day as the ILO Committee on the Application of Standards (CAS) examines Turkmenistan’s compliance with its obligation to end forced labor.
“Change is long-overdue. Every year, the Turkmen government uses coercion and exploitation of farmers and public sector employees to produce and harvest cotton,” said Ruslan Myatiev, director of Turkmen.News, which monitors forced labor in Turkmenistan’s cotton fields. “It is high time for the government to acknowledge this problem and allow labor rights defenders to monitor and report on working conditions without the threat of reprisal.”
The report provides first-hand evidence of forced labor in the 2022 cotton harvest in Turkmenistan and calls for comprehensive reforms to end forced labor and create a broader enabling environment for labor rights. The launch comes as representatives from governments and worker and employer representatives around the world are expected to testify against forced labor in Turkmenistan during the ILO CAS review of Turkmenistan’s compliance with ILO Convention on the Abolition of Forced Labour (No. 105). The government of Turkmenistan should cease its denials of state-organized forced labor and instead demonstrate the political will to end this system, the Cotton Campaign said.
The ILO CAS reviewed Turkmenistan’s compliance with the ILO Convention 105 most recently in 2021, when it urged the government to eliminate forced labor in the cotton sector and cooperate with the ILO and social partners to ensure compliance with the Convention. While the government has since allowed a high-level ILO mission to visit the country, it continues to publicly deny the use of forced labor in the harvest—most recently during its review by the UN Human Rights Committee in March 2023—and to harass and attack anyone who dares to speak out about human and labor rights abuses.
“The ILO has a key role to play in ending state-imposed forced labor in Turkmenistan and the review by the Committee on the Application of Standards of Turkmenistan’s forced labor record is timely,” said Allison Gill, Forced Labor Program Director at Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum (GLJ-ILRF), which hosts the Cotton Campaign. “However, any durable solution to ending forced labor must include an emphasis on other fundamental labor rights, especially freedom of association, assembly, and collective bargaining.”
Turkmenistan is one of the most closed and repressive countries in the world, with a system of arbitrary, corrupt governance that controls nearly every aspect of public life. During the annual harvest, the Turkmen government forces tens of thousands of public sector workers, including employees of schools and hospitals, to pick cotton or pay for replacement pickers under threat of penalty, such as loss of employment .
The government of Turkmenistan also has total control of the cotton production system, which relies on the exploitation of farmers. Every year, the government imposes cotton production quotas on farmers and enforces them with the threat of penalty, including fines and loss of land. Regional administrators tasked with quota enforcement mobilize civil servants to the harvest to demonstrate their commitment to the government’s cotton plan.
“State-imposed forced labor in the cotton harvest and exploitation of farmers are not an anomaly in Turkmenistan,” said Farid Tukhbatullin, Chairperson of Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights. “These practices are an integral part of a corrupt command system of agricultural production, including production of wheat and silk cocoons. The Turkmen government must introduce structural reforms to address forced labor and exploitation beyond the cotton sector.”
The report also highlights the risk of forced labor Turkmen cotton entering global garment and textile supply chains, in violation of import ban legislation and obligations on companies not to use goods made with forced labor. Suppliers in third countries, in particular Turkey, but also Pakistan and Italy, use cotton, yarn, and fabric originating in Turkmenistan and sell goods to major global brands. This means that brands and retailers face the risk of forced-labor Turkmen cotton entering their cotton supply chains at all stages of production.
“To eliminate all cotton made with state-imposed forced labor in Turkmenistan from global supply chains, we need stronger enforcement of existing laws governing human rights due diligence, supply chains, and imports, and the introduction of similar legislation across all jurisdictions,” said Raluca Dumitrescu, Coordinator of the Cotton Campaign. “Creating a level playing field will signal to the government of Turkmenistan that the use of forced labor is unacceptable.”
With only two months left until the 2023 cotton harvest, the government of Turkmenistan should take urgent steps to prevent the use of state-imposed forced labor in the harvest. The Cotton Campaign urges the government to engage constructively and in good faith with the ILO, UN human and labor rights monitors, such as the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, and independent civil society organizations with expertise on state-imposed forced labor.
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Contact information
For media inquiries, please contact Raluca Dumitrescu, Cotton Campaign Coordinator at coordinator@cottoncampaign.org.
The Cotton Campaign is a coalition of human and labor rights NGOs, independent trade unions, brand and retail associations, responsible investor organizations, supply chain transparency groups, and academic partners united to end forced labor and promote decent work for cotton workers in Central Asia.
Additional Information
Turkmenistan is the tenth-largest producer of cotton in the world and exports cotton lint, yarn, fabric, and finished goods. The government maintains complete control over the cotton production system, which is predicated on the coercion and exploitation of tens of thousands of tenant farmers, public sector employees, and others to produce and harvest cotton for the benefit of corrupt elites.
The government imposes annual cotton production quotas on farmers and enforces them with the threat of penalty, including fines and land confiscation. Farmers had to comply with unrealistic demands that did not account for environmental conditions and water availability, and were punished for growing food crops to feed their families. The state controls all essential inputs for cotton production, from seeds to pesticides to irrigation, and dictates the price it will pay farmers for cotton.
Corruption and extortion are endemic to the cotton production system. Money and personal connections determine which farmers receive the best plots of land; essential inputs ostensibly provided for free by the state, such as seeds, fertilizer, and agricultural equipment, are sold off for cash; middlemen skim money designated for replacement pickers; and cotton collection centers routinely cheat farmers of up to 20% of their harvests.
Every year during the cotton harvest, which takes place between August and December, the government forces tens of thousands of public sector workers, from teachers to factory workers to healthcare providers, to pick cotton or pay for replacement pickers under threat of penalty (such as loss of employment) and extorts money from the same workers to pay expenses related to the harvest. While child labor was not directly organized by the state, child labor was used in the 2022 harvest, driven by both poverty and the “pick or pay” system.
The rates to hire replacement workers increased in 2022, ranging from 20 to 60 manats per day (about USD$1-3). The average teacher’s salary, by comparison, is only 1300-1400 manats per month (about USD$65-70). Prices rose, in part, as a result of brokers and employers who charge public employees high prices for replacement workers, and pocket the difference between what they receive and what they pay replacement workers, if they hire them at all.
Both voluntary and forced laborers faced difficult and often abusive or dangerous working and living conditions. Picking assignments could last for days or weeks, and pickers had to pay for food, water, transportation and accommodations. Over the course of the harvest, they worked and slept in temperatures ranging from 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), in August, to below freezing conditions by December. Pickers did not receive warnings or protection from exposure to chemicals, such as pesticides.
The politically coercive atmosphere resulted in more forcibly mobilized cotton pickers being sent to fields than necessary. In October, President Berdimuhamedov delivered a speech to regional leaders, sharply criticizing officials for shortcomings in the cotton harvest. The speech, which appeared designed to instill fear into the regional and district khyakims of all cotton-growing areas of Turkmenistan, highlighted the direct control over the harvest from the highest levels of government. In the weeks following the speech, monitors documented a mass country-wide mobilization of state employees, despite the fact that there was nearly no cotton remaining.
The government continues to deny the use of forced labor in the cotton harvest. During the 2022 cotton season, Turkmen.News and the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights (TIHR) independently conducted monitoring of the cotton harvest across the country and documented the following cases:
Turkmen.News monitors interviewed 100 public sector employees forcibly mobilized to pick cotton in Lebap region, including teachers; doctors; telecom workers; employees of utilities, sports, culture, and tourism institutions; and other state-owned enterprises. One interviewee, a public utility worker from Kerki, recalled, “the tenant farmer immediately told us that he would not pay, because, first, he had no money to pay us, but second, he said ‘I did not ask you to come, you came on your own.’ The only thing he promised was to bring an urn so the pickers could boil water at lunchtime.”
In Lebap region, authorities enforced limited hours on shops and services to ensure that both shop owners and shoppers would go to the fields. Several district monitors documented that shops were required to be closed between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Even private sellers of food and prepared meals were only allowed to sell during the lunch break, and only in the cotton fields to pickers. Law enforcement strictly enforced the closures. A commission of representatives of the prosecutor's office, police, and tax service inspected shops and threatened to close violators for six months. Shopkeepers received no compensation for lost business.
Employees from some kindergartens in Turkmenabat and Dashoguz were mobilized to pick cotton or give money to their directors every six to seven days, whereas employees of other kindergartens in the same towns only had to pick or pay every 10–12 days. The discrepancy suggests that some heads of institutions took advantage of the lack of transparency to extort extra money from their employees for their personal gain.
On November 9, education departments in Lebap region received orders from the khyakimliks that teachers in all schools and kindergartens had to reduce the curriculum and complete the lessons by 11:00 a.m. so teachers could leave for the cotton fields by 11:30. A teacher reported, “They didn’t even give me time to change clothes or grab some food…The threatening demand came from Ashgabat from the Berdimuhamedovs, and was so precisely delivered that no one paid any attention to such minor things as clothes for working in the field, food, and water.”
