Our interactive report “The Cover-Up: Whitewashing Uzbekistan’s White Gold” gives insides in Uzbek cotton production 2015. Here you can find the full report, an info-graphic with documentary evidence, photos and a video. Moreover, the user-friendly interface allows you to navigate easily through the report chapters.
The evidence from the 2015 cotton harvest in Uzbekistan indicates that the government has not undertaken reforms to end its systematic use of forced labor. Yet the 2015 cotton harvest in Uzbekistan differed from previous years in a significant way: while the government continued to force more than a million people to pick cotton and farmers to grow cotton under threat of penalty, it did so while making significant efforts to project the appearance of cooperation with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and to claim compliance with its commitments to the World Bank to apply labor laws. Moreover, the Uzbek government intensified the persecution of independent monitors to cover up mass forced labor of children and adults in the cotton sector.
