The British Humanist Association has agreed to give its support to Anti-Slavery International, which campaigns to end the continuing forms of slave labour in the modern world, including the forced labour of children. One of its campaigns is against child slavery in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan.
Children in Uzbekistan do not have a choice regarding cotton picking. They are given daily quotas and if they fail to meet them they can be punished by beatings, detention or told that their grades will suffer. Children can also be left exhausted and suffering from ill-health and malnutrition after weeks of arduous labour.
Uzbekistan’s booming cotton industry, which is the 3rd biggest exporter in the world, is reliant on the use of hundreds of thousands of children in slavery during the three-month harvest each year.
The single biggest destination for Uzbek cotton is the European market. Despite strong condemnation from the European Union over the use of child slavery in Uzbek cotton production, the EU continues to allow the Government of Uzbekistan to benefit from reduced trading tariffs for its cotton imports to the EU despite its own rules that these benefits should be withdrawn.
Please sign the petition to the EU at
http://www.antislavery.org/english/campaigns/cottoncrimes/
Signatures are needed by 7th December.