Well, it’s that time of year again. Time, of course, for the start of the Uzbek, Turkmen, and soon, Kazakh, cotton harvest. This is an issue that we cover every year at Registan.net, and since we like to consider ourselves somewhat more aware of Central Asia than our immediate compatriots in North America, I thought it might behoove us to attempt to get right to the meaty truth, while avoiding sensationalism from either side of the aisle, though I’m sure we’ll invite plenty of sensationalist comments from both sides of the Ocean.
There are more than two sides to this issue, but two of the loudest on Registan in the past have been the righteous indignation [UPDATE: New Link] of western human rights activists of various stripes and the small but vocal minority of former cotton pickers that comment on this blog. At the risk of triteness, their arguments could be summed up as the following:
Human Rights Activists: But, this cotton is picked by children! Mere babies, really! [Update with link] In extreme cases, they die!
Uzbek Cotton Picker: It beats what we have to do the rest of year!
Now, if I may, I’ll try and flesh this out a bit. There recently appeared in the LA Times a story run by a politician, senator Tom Harkin, which is generally a bad sign. [Reason: Journalists are (sometimes unsuccessfully) paid to be unbiased, while Senators are (usually successfully) paid to be biased.] This particular senator “is chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and a longtime leader in the fight to end abusive child labor around the globe.” I generally distrust the adjective “longtime,” as it is generally assumed to be whatever constitutes a “long time” in your imagination. 5 years? 15 years? 45 years? 17 years? 17 years is pretty impressive, but I think he is making the mistake of equating Uzbek cotton picking with far worse situations. From his own website:
I am proud to be a leader in the growing movement to end abusive child labor, both within the United States and in countries around the globe. Worldwide more than 200 million children between the ages of five and 17 are engaged in the worst forms of child labor. They work in fields with pesticides and machetes, on the streets as child prostitutes, on battlefields as child soldiers, in mines, and as domestic servants. Millions of these children never see the inside of a classroom. The good news is that a recent report shows that progress is being made in reducing the worst forms of child labor, with 20 million fewer children being exploited. But much more work remains to be done.
Child labor may well be a symptom of social and political sickness, but so is child obesity. Child labor is not necessarily the same thing as child exploitation, and let’s keep in mind that Uzbek children spend the rest of the school year in school, unlike the unfortunate no-longer-innocents he mentions working as prostitutes and mine-field clearers. Uzbek children, and here I should qualify that to mean those living in rural areas of Uzbekistan, lead a staggeringly different experience from children in the West. From my own experience, they generally develop in many ways more quickly than urban American children, and one assumes somewhat faster than even rural American children.
Peace Corps Volunteers that served in Uzbekistan are themselves not unanimous on this issue. Some Volunteers that have spent time in the fields with their students [as teachers generally do, since the children are generally not left unsupervised] recognize the cotton fields as somewhere Uzbek children actually enjoy something they receive precious little of – Ozodlik. Freedom. Freedom from their homes, from their mothers and fathers, their aunts and uncles, their brothers and sisters, freedom from the familial pressure that envelops them the rest of their natural life, and freedom also from the non-illegal form of child labor known as chores. In other words, for at least some of these children, the work in the fields is actually a vacation.
And I admit that how you tell a story generally reveals the mood and opinion of the author. The picture above shows three smiling girls riding in the cotton wagon, probably after a long day’s work, picking kilogram after kilogram of white gold. Should these girls be in school? Absolutely. Is their government taking advantage of cheap labor to make an even larger profit? Yes. Is the continuation of the cotton monoculture the most reversible causes of the death of the Aral Sea? In my opinion, decidedly so. Why, then, is the issue at hand what shirt we buy? What’s more, the data being what it is, it’s easy to move your claim of child labor age further and further south. I’ve read everything from 10 to 6 years old. It’s hard for us to be sure what age is the lower limit, but it helps to remember that “school children” aren’t the only students in the fields, as college-aged kids also work. And as for the younger children, I think it’s important to remember that they are accompanied by their teachers, and no cotton boss is expecting the same effort from a 40kg girl as from the 80kg college boy.
In Senator Harkin’s defense, for he is worthy of defense, I am not going to refute his honorable advocacy of child rights. I merely think that his wording is not an accurate description of the situation in Uzbekistan. To quote the above article:
From now through the end of November, instead of attending classes, 2 million Uzbek children ages 6 to 15 will be forced to spend their days picking cotton.
Force is a rather strong word, chosen more for the connotation and cultural history of the United States and its own cotton slave labor history. Suggesting that Uzbekistan ONLY uses children, again, is fallacious. This sentence, while written with the best of intentions, is not going to get us anywhere. What is it, exactly, that the senator wants? Does he envision a bright future wherein Uzbek children become like their “more fortunate” and “happier” American counterparts, with bicycles and playstations, getting toys in their happy meals, and living from one ABC After School Special to the next? One hopes not. I assume he is only taking issue with the concept of making a profit from the labor of children.
My final point, then, is this. Is this not a cultural problem, as much as an issue of tyranny and exploitation of children by their President? In other words, if Karimov is unable to stop the child labor in Uzbekistan, might it be because he isn’t the only one who feels that it’s not that bad? If Karimov was replaced with the average ex-cotton-picking graduate of the Uzbekistani educational system, would they, too, allow the practice to continue? I think that, yes, it’s probable that this is unlikely to end any time soon. Once you replace the children with salaried cotton pickers, the price of the cotton will either rise or the profit margin to shrink, and perhaps disappear altogether. Market pressures like that should make all of us suspicious of our politician advocates. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, is it beyond the realm of doubt to suggest that American or Western cotton concerns are actually the driving force behind this new drive to end “child labor” in Uzbekistan?
Last word: My intent is not to defend Karimov or his politics, or to suggest that Uzbekistan should even continue to grow cotton. It’s clear that cotton is one of the few things that the Uzbek economy can depend on, and while that is the case, the Uzbek government is unlikely to change the status quo. That isn’t diabolical, that’s life. It’s pretty easy for Western politicians to ask 3rd world powers to diversify, but it is our responsibility to try and understand the details and difficulties of their current situation.
{ 27 comments }
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Senator Harkin has good intentions and his desire to stop abuse of children is to be commended .He would look more credible if he concentrated his efforts in his own backyard as even a casual observer can tell that the one of the most reckless groups in the US consist of youngsters from 9 t0 19 years old,many of them involved in drugs of abuse,violent behavior,gang membership,intimidation,property destruction,bullying,nasty behavior learned from TV,movies and video games.When the scale is so large as in the US, THIS REPRESENTS nothing short of exploitation of children by the entire system.
Very good arguments, I enjoyed reading this piece. Cotton picking times are part of my best childhood and youth memories.
Yes, it was actually much easier and fun work to do than daily household tasks we had to do at home and yes, it is necessitated by the need for millions of pairs of hands at the same time to pick that strategic crop before it goes bad.
For the sake of fairness I must mention that EVERYBODY gets paid for EVERY KILO of cotton they pick in Uzbekistan. But nevertheless, as rural schoolchildren we felt discriminated against our peers in big cities who diligently continued to study and prepare for college entrance exams, while we had fun on cotton fields.
That was at personal level, but in more general terms, forced labor is a forced labor. Just as we resist nuclear proliferation, we must also resist forced labor of any kind fun, light, strategically necessitated, etc.
The best solution to ending forced labor involving child labor in Uzbekistan is increasing the independence of cotton farmers. Just as slaves, forced laborers are also careless and wasteful workers. Farmers usually resist letting outsiders (especially children) for that reason (some of them also want to get all the money paid for cotton-picking themselves). It is no secret that most unemployed people from Uzbekistan flood Kazakh cotton-fields voluntarily. Ideally, these more skilled and willing cotton-pickers would be a better choice for Uzbek farmers as well.
So, the government should not intervene too much with farmers decision in deciding who to employ for cotton-picking, even though it is such an important crop for country’s economy. Cotton, corn, and beans are strategic for the U.S. economy too, but farmers themselves decide how to harvest their crops.
You know, it’s not really comparable, but I grew up in the rural American south in the late nineties/early 2000’s, and it wasn’t uncommon for kids to take off school to help their families with whatever yield they were working towards in a given season. It was pretty accepted.
I do genuinely agree that it is a more complex issue than simply a matter of child or human rights. And if, as @Ahad Abdurahmon indicates, the children are paid, then it’s not a black and white portrayal of “suffering.” But we’re not exactly talking about a region of nations that can de facto afford to sacrifice the labor; and while I don’t believe that good treatment alone can justify the employ of children under 15, there seems to be a definite difference between mistreated children forced into labor and children working as a result of economic necessity and circumstance. One could argue that this situation as described is still significantly better than child labor in Western countries in the mid-nineteenth century; before it became a moral issue.
I suspect I’m playing devil’s advocate. Interesting piece either way.
Interesting piece on the issue, Michael. I am aware that blogging is not really comparable to professional journalism in terms of background research but I think you could have done a bit more homework and use more than one article – in this case the Senator’s piece in the LA Times – when commenting on a broader issue rather than on that specific article. In any case, had you read the reports of researchers that actually go out and monitor what happens on the cotton fields of Uzbekistan issues such as as the sqalid living conditions, the health issues involved, the logic of regime survival behind using child labor in the cotton fields etc. would not have evaded your attention. Ok, at least your piece is not written in a dumb style, but come on – suggesting that picking cotton is a vacation, a bit of freedom? That’s a bit hardcore. Kids actually die in the fields picking cotton each year thanks to the conditions that they forced to work in. Articles such as this one put you – who considers yourself a bit more aware of Central Asia – at odds with pretty much everybody that has done some real research on the issue and more or less in line with what the official mouthpieces of the Uzbek regime have to say about the issue. I wonder if that is the company you want be in, but at least it will probably buy you a Shirin-Akiner-type of field trip of Uzbekistan’s cotton fields eventually should you keep it up.
Really enjoyed the piece, have to say, particularly, in terms of what is “acceptable” and “normal” in a given context, culture. While we are all unanimous in rejecting slavery, forced labour and so on, we might be having different perspectives on what’s a normal living condition or what’s a normal food in the country at question. Myself experienced cultural shock few years ago when was back home from the West (as if never lived there before). It took a while to get back on the same track and start feeling “normal”.
Thanks for all the comments, folks.
@Cornelius – the fact that “children are dying out in those cotton fields” is not well known to me. International Crisis Group does not make this point, to my opinion, and they seem to have done a lot of on the ground research. And as someone that has seen the cotton fields in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan up close, as someone that knows cotton pickers, I feel slightly closer to the issue than some. Which is not to say that everyone agrees. Here is a letter sent by a concerned citizen that references Andijan and mentions that Uzbekistan is one of the worst dictatorships in the world, both valid points. I am not arguing that conditions are universally great, but I would argue that not every story from the fields reads like the following.
I take issue with being compared to Shirin Akiner. I will never defend Karimov. I am merely asking for a little depth to the argument. Uzbekistan’s citizens are some of the most family-centered people in the world, and children are cared for, but not in the way with which you may agree. All children work, whether at home or in the fields, and that is considered to be the way they learn responsibility, a good work ethic, how to work together, etc.
Any child that dies picking cotton – that is an unquantifiable tragedy. However, what if it was a 20-year-old unemployed man, living in those same conditions? Would it be less of an issue? If you take the children out of the equation, the cotton still needs to be picked, and the pickers won’t be treated any better.
You want my real desire laid out?
Uzbekistan cuts back on its cotton growth, starts growing more melons, more beans, more grapes, more wheat, less cotton and less rice. Cover the irrigation ditches, use drip irrigation, use fewer pesticides and invest in farm infrastructure to utilize more motorized labor and drip irrigation. Uzbekistan can send the saved water down the Amu Darya, maybe start to bring the Aral Sea back to a shadow of itself. The government is making money hand-over-fist with the current market price of cotton, so these changes are unlikely to happen any time soon, but I’m giving you a dream, not a reality.
Following your logic, Michael, one can justify any attrocities and absues commited by regimes like Karimov’s. Say, thousands of religious and political dissidents are languishing in Uzbek prisons (see recent Memorial’s report for evidences) but one, using your methology, could say that they are at a kind of vacation and enjoy freedom from their relatives, from abbesity and from being ‘imprisoned’ in their flats watching garbige TV shows. Your comparison of forced child labour with the the Western civilization illnesses is cinical. The second flaw of your position is your fatalist believe that Karimov has no other choice but exploit poor kids. The example of neighboring Kazakhstan suggest different. Having similar climate conditions and the same Soviet legacy the Kazakh goverment doesn’t intervenes as much in the cotton farming as in uzbekistan. As a result the cotton production and profits are in constant growth since the beginning of the 90s. And finally, your suggestion that the cotton harvest is a kind of entertinment for some kids could be fair only with regards to the Soviet realities. The current realities in uzbekistan are much uglier than in the Soviet past. The Soviets at least provided some return of cotton revenuies back to the society. Nowadays those who control the cotton revenues are so geedy that nothing is being returned back to the village. I was really struck by the way how one-to-one you’re replicating the arguments of the Uzbek propaganda and add even more cinical stuff.
Are you seriously equating picking cotton with a tortuous prison sentence? I think you might not understand my point, as I never said that Karimov has “no other choice.” You’re either deliberately misunderstanding me or have some serious axe to grind. I am not defending cotton picking, but merely asking the American audience to try and understand the issue in a more complex discourse than what we find in our knee-jerk media.
Michael, forgive me for saying this but your article does read like a pro-Karimov writing. I hope you did it deliberately to provoke a discussion and attract more visitors to the site. Joshua does it all the time. Say crazy things to rile your readers and more visitors will pile in.
You say you want “a little depth to the argument”. Always a good idea. It fosters a better understanding both among the discussants and of the issue itself. But there are times when “a little depth to the argument” is meaningless. That is when the factual evidence is conclusive. Allow me to marshal in the facts.
i) It’s bad for children’s health to have them exposed to pesticides for 2-3 months each year.
ii) It’s bad where human capital is concerned. All in all, children and college students spend 2-4 months of each academic year in cotton fields. (Since you have lived over there, you will recall that school kids who live in the countryside spend an additional month or two in the spring, hoeing cotton fields to remove weeds). The result is high school graduates who’ve studied only 2/3 of the time they are supposed to. Some of them go onto colleges. And then you have teachers, doctors, engineers, economists who’ve studied for only 2/3 of a four year college program. Cycle through a couple of times and you have a functionally illiterate society.
iii) It’s bad economically. It costs the parents when children are sent to work in the fields. The school administration provides kids with meals for which the parents have to pay a significant fee. And kids get paid peanuts. The costs exceed the revenues.
iv). It’s bad for the farmers (i.e, same as kolkhoz members in Soviet times. Nothing has changed materially). It costs them to grow cotton. Every year they lose money and go more into debt.
The government officials are the only beneficiaries. Check out uznews and ferghana for the latest cotton prices, domestic and international to get a sense of their benefits. This year the price ratio is about 1 to 6, according to Uznews.
You say you’d never defend Karimov. But Akiner et al don’t defend him either. They all readily admit that he’s no Jeffersonian democrat. That he’s an authoritarian ruler. They only say we have to understand the complex and complicated circumstances the old man has to operate in.
The way you bring in the Western angle into the discussion is reminiscent of Akiner’s discussion of the deaths in Andijan and the death of that poor Brazilian chap in London.
Well, let me then cite your own words:
‘My final point, then, is this. Is this not a cultural problem, as much as an issue of tyranny and exploitation of children by their President? In other words, if Karimov is unable to stop the child labor in Uzbekistan, might it be because he isn’t the only one who feels that it’s not that bad? If Karimov was replaced with the average ex-cotton-picking graduate of the Uzbekistani educational system, would they, too, allow the practice to continue? ‘
My own question is isn’t this a fatalist view of the FCL?
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 09/28/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
@Ihor: Thanks for the comment! I totally agree with everything you said, and I’ll admit that part of the purpose was to spin it a little differently. Anyone who cares to can find my previous posts on the Cotton Harvests and see that I’m usually more strident in my Anti Child Labor posts. To be cynical [as we all can be], I would remind everyone that we’re not exactly policy setters here, and if I come out and suggest that the recent anti-Uzbek-cotton drive is market driven, I suspect that to be taken as a realistic approach. Altruism is a rare thing, and if US companies boycott Uzbek cotton, there’s probably another reason other than that it makes them look good. Maybe.
@Alisher: I’ll accept the label of fatalist, I suppose. Too much time spent in Central Asia – I was the white raven turned black, to quote the Russian/Central Asian proverb. In all honesty, my greatest hero in Uzbek History remains Faizullah Khojaev, Mr. “You Can’t Eat Cotton,” to quote him and Chasing the Sea. I would be willing to suggest that the cotton monoculture might be the greatest sin of Soviet Uzbekistan and Independent Uzbekistan.
SO, to be optimistic: MAYBE if we convince Karimov to stop using child labor, his cotton profit margin will shrink as he is forced to pay more for workers, or better still, privatizes the nation’s agriculture and they grow only what they can afford and what the market will bear, which hopefully means less pesticides, less cotton, less rice, more melons, potatoes, beans, corn, wheat, onions, turp, etc. With more food produced, they could make a bundle selling the excess up north to Kazakhstan and Russia, and maybe let the Amu Darya heal in the process…
Like I said before, it is better to bring the issue to the attention of decision-makers in the way that will speak to them:
1. Children are unskilled, slow, and wasteful workforce.
2. There are enough unemployed adults who are willing to replace children and they are better workers because a) they are willing workers, b) because they are adults. Therefore they will work faster and better. This will also at least be a temporary solution to seasonal workforce-emigration.
3. The anticipated benefits of using child labor is exceeding the costs (damaged foreign policy, decreasing cotton exports, domestic discontent, etc).
We must push these and other similar arguments instead of making emotional statements and demonizing everyone.
Michael, the stuff you write on this site is valuable. It does bring a lot of an in-depth insight. I hope reporters do read what you write here before they write their articles. Having said that, I am afraid it is not possible to come up with an in-depth argument without looking like an apologist or defender of Karimov’s regime.
And I’m not being an idealist or a perfectionist here. A debate of that kind is possible, say, about Alievs’ regime of Azerbaijan.
Their domestic economic decisions suck. Resource curse, lots of corruption, etc. Yes, but their foreign policy has been sensible. They done a lot to maximize their own and by extension Azerbaijan’s importance to the world by turning the place into a transit hub.
Their domestic politics suck. Authoritarian, no free elections, etc.. Yes, but there are opposition parties operating openly inside the country, with their offices and newspapers. Foreign media such as Radio Liberty also have offices. And foreign NGOs operate more or less freely.
A similar set of arguments can be made about the governments of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. But I’m hard pressed to think of a way to have that sort of a debate about Karimov’s government. You might as well try having an in-depth argument about policies of the regime in North Korea.
Cotton means a lot for Uzbekistan, much more than it means for Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan. So comparison with neighbors is not that meaningful. Besides, child labor is quite common in Kazakh fields as well.
I would argue that cotton picking is perceived by children more as a vacation. As poverty is a huge issue in villages, children at least get a chance of getting proper meals and earn some money to help their families. I bet many children would be unhappy to be deprived from opportunity to earn money and help their families.
It is possible that some accidents happen in cotton fieldwork. But do not forget that the same happen in everyday life in villages as well – they drink the same dirty water and suffer from inferior medical service.
As for skill required for picking up cotton – I don’t think it is a job that required high skills. On the contrary, children have advantage in picking up cotton as their height is just right for it. I also doubt about health issues – in fact children work in open air. The weather in autumn is mostly nice – not hot, not cold. There is a need for more scientific study on effects of working in cotton fields.
So I would agree that there is some misrepresentation of child labor in cotton fields of Uzbekistan.
Last point: I think US senator Tom Harkin would better to know that US is also to blame for child labor in Uzbekistan. Cotton prices are highly distorted due to subsidies in developed countries like US. If cotton prices would be free from government interventions (subsidies), there would be less child labor in the world.
Enver, you need to work on your analytical skills. If you remove the cotton subsidies, there will more child labor in the world, not less because it’ll be more profitable to grow cotton in places like Uzbekistan. Subsidies suppress the price making the business less profitable for the non-subsidized. Kind of intuitive, isn’t it? You pay the farmer to grow more of the stuff. More of the stuff on the market means lower prices. As far as the cotton goes, Oxfam estimates that if all subsidies are removed, the world price for cotton would go up 10-12 percent. So, the US cotton subsidies reduce Karimov & Co.’s profit margin. It’s fine if you want to blame the US but try to come up with a sensible argument. The rest of your assertions are similarly flawed. There has been plenty of studies of how cotton pesticides affect health. For example, in Nicarague in the late 1970s. As far as Uzbekistan goes, over the last two decades there’s been a lot of reports of how poor public health is kind of related to the massive use of pesticides.
Ahad, the problem with your suggestion is how do you bring “the issue to the attention of decision-makers in the way that will speak to them” if they deny the issue exists?
The first time the issue was brought up publicly was apparently in 1987 when Ogonyok magazine in Moscow published an article about child labor on cotton fields in Uzbekistan. The response was an angry denial and accusations of slander against the good hearted, hard working people of Uzbekistan.
Exactly twenty years later, in 2007 the BBC aired Simon Ostrovsky report. The response was an angry denial and the assertion that the practice existed in Soviet times but had been discontinued 15-20 years prior. (I don’t know if the response included accusations of slander).
As we speak, Ferghana.ru and Uznews say kids are still busy picking cotton. Maybe, you can call the nearest Uzbek embassy to see if they admit the fact. If they do, fax them your list of non-emotional reasons of why child labor is bad. Let us know how it goes.
In terms of child agricultural labor, it was not uncommon for junior high and high school students in my state to be bussed to neighboring corn states to de-tassle seed corn fields for large multi-national seed companies. This work took place in the hottest months, under 8 ft tall corn, in calf deep irrigation water. Not very pleasant conditions but the money was good for a two or three week period.
Ihor,
Your analysis isn’t intuitive at all, not that being ‘intuitive’ is any indicator of accuracy. You write:
If you remove the cotton subsidies, there will more child labor in the world, not less because it’ll be more profitable to grow cotton in places like Uzbekistan. Subsidies suppress the price making the business less profitable for the non-subsidized. Kind of intuitive, isn’t it? You pay the farmer to grow more of the stuff. More of the stuff on the market means lower prices. As far as the cotton goes, Oxfam estimates that if all subsidies are removed, the world price for cotton would go up 10-12 percent.
You’re making a lot of leaps there. I’ll only point out some. Subsidies might make it harder for the non-subsidized to make a profit, but they also, by definition, make it easier for the subsidized to make a profit. To make your point you’d have to provide evidence that if the subsidies were ended not only would all the subsidized growers keep producing but also that the non-subsidized would enter the market. Oxfam’s estimates aren’t anymore warranted than your assertions, for they assume that if the subsidies were removed that the non-subsidized current non-growers wouldn’t then enter the market. If they did, and there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t since their competitors would no longer have the advantage of subsidies, then the price would fall again to the market level. Of course I’m not predicting what the market price would be – but I don’t give much credence to Oxfam’s estimate either.
It’s not a cultural issue. To steal from Bill Clinton, “It’s the political economy, stupid.” Children are cheap and can be coerced.
Your suggestion that this labor is semi-voluntary is most disturbing. There certainly are a few kids whose parents have them out of school anyway to supplement family wages. But there is plenty of documentation that children (and their teachers, by the way) are only out in the fields because their schools (mahalla committees, local police and prosecutors) threaten them with some pretty bad consequences if they don’t. See the reports on http://www.laborrights.org/ if you doubt it.
It’s hard to know what to say to the “I worked in the fields in the hot sun, and anyway, these aren’t child prostitutes/organ suppliers/coal miners, so it’s not that bad” argument. We know at least 7 kids died in accidents last year, and more from hepatitis and other illnesses they got in the fields. The rest “just” got gastritis/hungry/exhausted and missed a few months of school (to add to the time they miss in the spring weeding, etc.) Would you like to see this continue so that Karimov and friends can continue skimming the massive profits they realize each year on Uzbekistan’s 1 bln in cotton sales? I wouldn’t.
@Cassandra: your comment is one of the more annoying to receive, if I may be so blunt. You are responding to statements that I have not made.
Who are you quoting here? Did you actually read the post, or are you just blinded by your own goals and responding to some of the more strident comments to the post?
No shit, Sherlock. No one wants this to continue.
I signed your petition, as I think many of Registan’s readers would do if they were aware of it. I don’t know if you’ll come back to see this response, or if you’re one of the comment bombing trolls that soars across the net. You have good intentions and a strong cause, but you’re not making any friends in my house.
Michael, I was responding to one of your commenters:
In terms of child agricultural labor, it was not uncommon for junior high and high school students in my state to be bussed to neighboring corn states to de-tassle seed corn fields for large multi-national seed companies…
And you did say that the kids might be relishing the chance to have some “freedom,” after all.
Maybe making friends is too great an ambition, but defining common ground might be a place to start. It sounds like you might accept that the boycott could be a way to get the GOUz to move away from forced child labor (whatever normative coloration you’d like to give it), and maybe even decrease mandatory cotton planting and give farmers a little latitude…and that this would be a good thing. I agree. But it’s hard to take that away from your piece when you conclude that it may be a big Western plot against Uzbekistan.
How can you suggest I wouldn’t come back to Registan? Khudoga shukur, I’ll be here often!
Ihor, having read your comments one can easily notice that you need analytical skills badly.
Simple logic states that there is more child labor in developing countries than in developed world. When people are poor they use every chance to meet ends, even using child labor. That’s obvious and self-explanatory.
Subsidies in developed world does not allow poor countries to develop. Indirectly, US subsides on agriculture increase child labor in world.
Some points to think about – child labor is condemned mostly for the reasons of 1) exploitation of children, 2) children miss education; and 3) negative health effects.
In case of Uzbek children all these 3 arguments are questionable. Most children do not mind picking cotton, as they conceive it as vacation and opportunity to earn income (they are paid and provided with food, which is really important for poor).
Children study at schools and receive not that bad education (literacy rate in Uzbekistan is comparable to that in US). Negative health effects need to be proved by more scientific evidence. Pesticides mostly affect human health when consumed products (water) containing them or through inhalation (the risk present for those spreading pesticides – children do not do that).
Last point, I would agree that child labor will exist irrespectively from government policies in Uzbekistan as long as poverty is widespread and families find it more profitable to send their children to work than to school.
So, I would agree with the idea of the article that there is a big misrepresentation about child labor in Uzbekistan in US and western media.
Cassandra:
Are you inviting Sen. Tom Harkin (and his colleagues) to speak at the protest? If you forgive me a bit of wishful thinking, a speech by Al Gore wouldn’t be out place either. He has seen the Aral Sea first-hand and even used the images of the disaster in his documentary.
I’m sure you guys are alerting the news media to the planned protest? Both VOA and RFERL would likely cover the event. Of the big TV networks, Al Jazeera English might be interested. Robert Kaplan of the Atlantic says AJE covers stories that CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS would consider too obscure or insignificant. All three have their regional HQ literally a few blocks away from the scene of the planned protest.
And in this era of citizen journalism, we hope to see the protest on Youtube very soon.
I also think a display at the protest of bilboard-size photos of forced child labor in Uzbekistan would be very effective. Images can be very powerful. Photographers like Thomas Grabka would certainly be happy to let you use their work. And your neighborhood Kinko’s might do the printing pro bono.
Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like a smart alecky armchair protester. Just thinking out loud how to maximize the public effect.
Good luck!
@Enver: At first you seemed like someone who didn’t understand basic economics. Now you sound like someone whose goal is to simply defend the practices of Karimov’s regime. People like you are facing an uphill battle here. Because the general public will find it increasingly difficult to take your arguments seriously.
It’s a rare day when labor unions, corporations, NGOs and governments agree on something. When they do, it means the general public agrees with them. Simply because they are representative of the general public. AFL-CIO, WalMart, HRW and the State Dept have all come out against the forced child labor in Uzbekistan.
Enver, your assertion that kids “conceive it as vacation” is amusing. How do you know what Uzbek children think? Nobody knows what the adults or children in Uzbekistan think. There is no free press and polls are not allowed there. As a counterargument, I can point to the BBC Newsnight report where an Uzbek girl says she’d rather be in school than picking cotton. It’s 2:35 minutes into this video: youtube dot come/watch?v=rczHwW9ie
@Josh and others who draw analogies with the life of kids elsewhere. As Alisher emphasized above the operative word is FORCED. Every Autumn the government forces schools, colleges and, in fact, all other establishments, even stores and markets, closed and adults and children are sent to pick cotton, withe the pay barely covering the cost of meals. Does that happen in the US or Bangladesh? No. The only other place where the government forces the population en masse is North Korea. This similarity between the PDRK and Uzbekistan shouldn’t be surprising. The Uzbek government is made up of members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Uzbek SSR. They have had the same training and education as members of the Workers’ Party of Korea. Hence the same managerial style. And both promise great future and tirelessly admonish people to work towards the great future. Both call for vigilance for the outside world is hostile and the Motherland is teeming with enemies from within.
You may find yourself less confused about the impact of cotton on health, environment and economy if you read some of the reports that the above mentioned organizations offer. While at it, check out a recent Ferghana report that cites Uzbek health experts on the nature and effect of the pesticides used.
@Paul and Enver: Just to finish up our increasingly off-topic discussion of US cotton subsidies’ effect on Karimov’s wallet. How would the removal of the subsidies affect Karimov’s wallet given the basic facts? The US is word’s third largest cotton exporter. The cost structure of US cotton farming is thusly. In 1991-2003, the average revenue was $.078/lb, the average total costs were $0.78/lb and the average subsidy was $0.21/lb. The world without those subsidies will mean higher world cotton prices. Which is good because African farmers would see more dough. And bad because Karimov, too, will have more dough. But no doubt you guys will come up with some nonsensical arguments because your sole purpose is to divert the discussion from what Alisher termed FCL and the damage it has caused.
Subsidies are a fun game to play, since it’s true they have an effect, but changing them will have an unproveable effect. By which I mean, one can’t assume that the amount of cotton will be produced once the subsidies are produced. If the prices goes down, those who can choose not to will stop growing it, while those tied to it will suffer. If the prices goes up, those who can choose what to grow will probably grow more of it, eventually driving the price back down… but then again, I’m generalizing here, and I’m hardly an agro-scientist or an economist.
Ihor, you seem to have never been to cotton fields in Uzbekistan. I also doubt if you have ever visited this country to know about real problems people face. So let me tell you, the most serious problem is poverty. What you try to sell as “slave labor” is not true. I doubt your sincerity on this matter.
Besides, the sources you recommended on child labor in Uzbekistan are not that credible. Especially ferghana.ru is biased, just have a look at photos of children ‘forced to pick up cotton’ on the article http://www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=6321
it’s true insinuation! have you ever seen children picking up cotton without bags and special clothing? I doubt you’ve ever seen cotton picking.
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