Turkmenistan Mobilizing Thousands of Civilians in Cotton Harvest

It's still unclear whether Turkmenistan has the political will to root out forced labor from its own cotton fields, Allison Gill, forced labor program director at the Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum, told Sourcing Journal Monday.

Gill, whose organization hosts the Cotton Campaign, a multistakeholder initiative that aims to eliminate state-sponsored forced labor in Central Asia, was responding to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's recent report that the authoritarian nation was once again mobilizing thousands of teachers, healthcare workers and other civil servants to bring in the cotton harvest.

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In the eastern Lebap Province, the outlet wrote, authorities have ordered state agencies to conscript half of their employees during the weekdays and all of them on the weekends. In some regions, local residents said, army soldiers are also involved in the backbreaking work. Everyone involved is required to harvest between 20 to 25 kilograms—that's 40 to 55 pounds—of the fiber each day, even when temperatures soar past 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Those who refuse—and can't afford sufficient bribes—are threatened with wage cuts or job loss.

Compared with neighboring Uzbekistan, which until recently was guilty of much the same, Turkmenistan has been slow to acknowledge that it has a forced labor problem in the first place, Gill said. This is despite the tremendous appetite from the international community to see change.

To date, 140 brands and retailers, including Adidas, Gap Inc., and Levi Strauss, have signed the Turkmen Cotton Pledge, committing to boycott cotton from the world's 10th-largest producer of the fiber until it's no longer produced using state-imposed forced labor as “independently verified by the International Labor Organization, as well as determined by the Cotton Campaign.” In the United States, a Withhold Release Order against Turkmen cotton has been active since 2018, though Gill says that brands need to do their due diligence because the fiber can still creep in, if not directly then through third countries such as Pakistan and Turkey.

“Due diligence really needs to be stepped up if brands are serious about eliminating forced labor in their supply chain,” she added.

Turkmen officials insisted to the United Nations Human Rights Committee earlier this year that the country doesn't have a policy to compel anyone into mandatory labor during the cotton harvest—or any other crop—because “cutting-edge” technology has rendered the mass utilization of human resources “not necessary.” But workers in Lebap told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that no cotton-picking machines were visible and that they had to harvest everything by hand.

Cotton is the former Soviet republic's biggest export after gas and oil. In 2022, the country exported cotton and cotton products valued at nearly $300 million. This year, the government has set a target of 1.25 million tons of the fiber.

Patricia Jurewicz, CEO of Responsible Sourcing Network, which runs the Turkmen Cotton Pledge with the Cotton Campaign—she also co-founded the latter initiative—expressed her surprise that Turkmenistan was still dragooning its citizens “in today's day and age.”

“After seeing the number of international brands and retailers that banned the use of Uzbek cotton for over a decade due to the same practices, you would think the Turkmen government would end this activity,” she told Sourcing Journal. “[This is why] brands are telling their suppliers to stay away from Turkmen cotton, otherwise they risk having their products stopped at the U.S. border.”

Gill said that Turkmenistan is beginning to engage with the International Labour Organization, which is somewhat encouraging. But it's still too early to see how things will shake out. As in Uzbekistan, terminating forced conscription is only the start of a longer, more involved process to create an environment where labor rights can thrive, she said.

“There has to be accountability and there have to be systemic changes that go beyond ending mobilization to actually enabling labor rights,” Gill added. “Because they are still mobilizing and they still publicly deny that they use forced labor, I think we can see that they're not there yet.”

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