Spotlight on Uzbekistan
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Uzbekistan could also build international confidence in its wider commitment to tackling corruption
by joining the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). It can and should also take further
steps to make public the ownership information relating to all businesses (including their beneficial
owners) in the Government’s new clusters, to assuage concerns that these structures are simply
providing new opportunities for politically connected individuals to game the system for financial
gain, and to help ensure that the power of the state is not being used at local level to assist them
with their operations through forced labour. If not handled as a strategic priority corruption risks
derailing the Uzbek reform process, which would vindicate critics who see the post-2016 period as
merely being about providing new ways for the elite to enrich itself.
Greater transparency over the management of clusters is essential in the context of completing and
defending the gains made in tackling forced labour in the cotton sector. Pressure to lift the
international boycott of Uzbek cotton had been growing in the wake of progress made in reducing
forced labour but it has intensified further since the start of the pandemic. Arguments in favour of
ending the boycott focus on the economic gains from opening international markets to being able to
raise cotton picker wages and modernise the sector, thereby helping end the remaining forced labour
more swiftly. While cotton campaigners worry, particularly in the context of unknown risks of the
cluster model, that ending the boycott whilst more than 100,000 forced workers remain would
remove the pressure to complete the job. The only realistic way out of this conundrum lies in a
compromise that provides reassurance that future incidences of forced labour will be properly
brought to light and addressed by the Government. This will require allowing local non-governmental
organisations (NGOs), working in concert with international partners, to work freely to monitor the
harvest and expose wrongdoing. The boycott needs to be brought to an end to secure the long-term
survival of the sector and assist the Uzbek economy at this time of need, but to ensure international
confidence this will at minimum require the registration of cotton monitoring NGOs and local
independent trade unions, notably those of activists currently involved in monitoring for both the
International Labour Organisation (ILO) and Cotton Campaign. Doing this would help build
confidence in lowering the warning level on forced labour from red to amber, in the knowledge that
if there is retrenchment, pressure on cotton exports could be renewed.
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Putting the requisite
political pressure on the Ministry of Justice to expedite these registrations should be a small price for
the Government to pay to end this black mark on Uzbekistan’s reputation and protect the economy.
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