GSCP webinar on forced child labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry

Steve Trent, Executive Director, Environmental Justice Foundation

The GSCP hosted the White Gold webinar early October 2009, giving the floor to Steve Trent who presented to an audience of 15 members on the evidence of and potential solutions to child labour in the Uzbek cotton industry. An excerpt of this session follows:

(...) “The chief export market for Uzbek cotton is the European Union. However, the Uzbek government has “forcefully resisted” independent audits of its cotton production and has attempted to subvert retailers’ actions to track their cotton supply chain by labelling Uzbek cotton as “product of CIS”.”
Steve argued that economic action, by way of a boycott, was the only effective way to foster change in Uzbekistan. He urged industry decision makers to lobby the major international cotton suppliers with whom they trade. (...)