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imomusHalfway through Behind the scenes at Newsnight, a comic video intended to inspire young aspirant journalists, is a scene of staggering (and, hopefully, staged) complacency. The Newsnight team is having its post-programme editorial meeting. The editor congratulates them on the fact that three big stories running throughout the week on Newsnight have been self-generated.
One of these Newsnight exclusives, the editor tells us proudly, had the effect of "changing the way people do their business". Newsnight's journalists discovered that children in Uzbekistan aged nine and up are working to produce cotton which is then sold in the UK. "So we all are wearing clothes containing cotton which children have been forced by their government to pick." Here's the report (part 1, part 2, part 3).
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When broadcast by the BBC in October 2007, this report prompted Tesco, Marks and Spencer and The Gap to ban from their stores all clothes containing cotton made in Uzbekistan. Finland’s Marimekko, Estonia’s Krenholm and Sweden's H&M announced a boycott in November. Various campaigns -- like this video, White Gold -- have been urging consumers to boycott any clothes containing Uzbek cotton. They present it as a simple ethical imperative: don't help contribute to "one of Central Asia's most brutal regimes" by buying cotton from a state-controlled cotton industry which uses enforced child labour.
Things are, however, somewhat more complicated, and the ethics are more nuanced. People in Britain might think they're avoiding the exploitation of children by boycotting anything "Made in Uzbekistan", but they aren't. They may, instead, be kicking away the economic ladder to the ethical luxuries they now enjoy. Clean cotton -- cotton which doesn't involve enforced labour or poor working conditions -- is as difficult to come by in developing countries as it was in our own history (we, of course, used African slaves to pick our cotton during our own "developing" age).
Boycotters aren't necessarily helping Uzbek farmers. "It is not obvious," says the Fair Trade Association of Australia and New Zealand, "how boycotts might tangibly contribute to the improvement of the lives of farmers and workers. If the intention of a boycott is to make the Uzbek government reform, but it does not, then conditions on the ground for farmers might worsen as economic hardship bites. Or, as some predict, the government may simply just sell its cotton elsewhere, to the growing markets of Russia and China. Another twist is that some central Asian industry sources are claiming that Uzbek cotton boycotts are being pushed by Russian influences, keen to hurt Uzbeki industry for political purposes."
The CIA factbook adds another possible motivation: "Uzbek authorities have accused US and other foreign companies operating in Uzbekistan of violating Uzbek tax laws and have frozen their assets." And the Uzbek government themselves have another theory: "It is known that nowadays the Uzbek cotton drives out other producing countries' cotton on the world market and the [agitation] around it has appeared immediately after lifting of the state subsidies for cotton producers in some... well-known countries, that makes them less competitive in the global market". Western companies are forced, in other words, to deal with Uzbekistan, and they don't like it.
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But, as Petra Kjell of the Environmental Justice Foundation points out in the video above (filmed at Berlin Fashion Week last year), wherever in the developing world cotton is made (and 99% of cotton farmers live in the developing world, producing 75% of the world's cotton), children are used to pick it. In Egypt one million children work picking cotton, in India hundreds of thousands of child workers do it. All three cotton-producing Central Asian republics -- Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan -- use students and forced labour during the two months of the year when cotton is picked, according to Andrew Stroehlein, director of media and information at the International Crisis Group.
Meanwhile, Fair Trade cotton represents, at present, less than 1% of global cotton flows (source: Fair Trade Foundation), and the global organic retail cotton market accounts for just 6% of all cotton traded (source: Organic Exchange).
Not only is it very difficult to trace the sourcing of cotton back through an incredibly complex supply chain, there's also a complicated labour ecosystem arranged around cotton. Bangladesh -- where twenty million people depend on the garment industry for employment -- buys 65% of its cotton annually from Uzbekistan. Garment exports account for a stunning 75% of Bangladesh's annual export income. Ban-and-boycott people need to consider that, in addition to not-necessarily-helping Uzbekistan, their bans and boycotts actively harm Bangladesh.
Uzbek children aren't taken out of school to harvest cotton -- the schools are closed for the two month cotton season and the children are set to work alongside their teachers (and even doctors and nurses) getting the harvest picked. It's a collective national effort supervised by the police, an obligation. But it isn't enough for us just to ask ourselves if we'd send our own privileged and protected children unpaid into the fields: we have to look at the specifics of life in Uzbekistan to understand why it happens.
Over 60% of the population lives in rural areas, where cotton-growing is the main industry. Almost 50% of the Uzbeki population is 16 or under. Cotton production is by far the biggest industry in the country; the whole economy is based on it, and wealth flowing in from cotton revenues has raised Uzbek life expectancy three to six years higher than that of surrounding Central Asian states, despite widespread environmental damage (toxic chemical sprays, the Aral Sea dried up, dust storms). These kinds of conditions haven't been prevalent in the UK since the 19th century -- a time when we, too, sent children up chimneys and down mines, thereby eventually achieving the kind of society which has the luxury of banning these activities by law.
"I think boycotting Uzbek cotton is an overreaction," says someone called Alanna on a bulletin board. "Considering all the ghastly forms of child exploitation you find in the world, condemning the Uzbeks because children harvest (along with their familes) seems excessive. I lived in Uzbekistan for 4 years, and many of my friends had childhood memories of picking cotton. They hated it, but it was only a few weeks every year, and they were not mistreated."
This April, Uzbekistan signed into law the ILO Minimum Age convention, which allows light work to be done by people as young as 13, but tries to raise the minimum working age in all signatory countries. It's unlikely that child labour will cease overnight, but it's likely to take less than the century or so it took in Britain, which didn't sign up to the ILO minimum age convention until 2000.
Meanwhile, those who still want to ban Uzbek cotton might want to extend their ban to all cotton. That's the only sure way to avoid cotton "dirtied" by the picking hands of children. They might also want to invest whatever spare money they have in Uzbek industries they do approve of, because history tends to show that better conditions generally come with better economies.
One of these Newsnight exclusives, the editor tells us proudly, had the effect of "changing the way people do their business". Newsnight's journalists discovered that children in Uzbekistan aged nine and up are working to produce cotton which is then sold in the UK. "So we all are wearing clothes containing cotton which children have been forced by their government to pick." Here's the report (part 1, part 2, part 3).
[Error: unknown template video]
When broadcast by the BBC in October 2007, this report prompted Tesco, Marks and Spencer and The Gap to ban from their stores all clothes containing cotton made in Uzbekistan. Finland’s Marimekko, Estonia’s Krenholm and Sweden's H&M announced a boycott in November. Various campaigns -- like this video, White Gold -- have been urging consumers to boycott any clothes containing Uzbek cotton. They present it as a simple ethical imperative: don't help contribute to "one of Central Asia's most brutal regimes" by buying cotton from a state-controlled cotton industry which uses enforced child labour.
Things are, however, somewhat more complicated, and the ethics are more nuanced. People in Britain might think they're avoiding the exploitation of children by boycotting anything "Made in Uzbekistan", but they aren't. They may, instead, be kicking away the economic ladder to the ethical luxuries they now enjoy. Clean cotton -- cotton which doesn't involve enforced labour or poor working conditions -- is as difficult to come by in developing countries as it was in our own history (we, of course, used African slaves to pick our cotton during our own "developing" age).
Boycotters aren't necessarily helping Uzbek farmers. "It is not obvious," says the Fair Trade Association of Australia and New Zealand, "how boycotts might tangibly contribute to the improvement of the lives of farmers and workers. If the intention of a boycott is to make the Uzbek government reform, but it does not, then conditions on the ground for farmers might worsen as economic hardship bites. Or, as some predict, the government may simply just sell its cotton elsewhere, to the growing markets of Russia and China. Another twist is that some central Asian industry sources are claiming that Uzbek cotton boycotts are being pushed by Russian influences, keen to hurt Uzbeki industry for political purposes."
The CIA factbook adds another possible motivation: "Uzbek authorities have accused US and other foreign companies operating in Uzbekistan of violating Uzbek tax laws and have frozen their assets." And the Uzbek government themselves have another theory: "It is known that nowadays the Uzbek cotton drives out other producing countries' cotton on the world market and the [agitation] around it has appeared immediately after lifting of the state subsidies for cotton producers in some... well-known countries, that makes them less competitive in the global market". Western companies are forced, in other words, to deal with Uzbekistan, and they don't like it.
[Error: unknown template video]
But, as Petra Kjell of the Environmental Justice Foundation points out in the video above (filmed at Berlin Fashion Week last year), wherever in the developing world cotton is made (and 99% of cotton farmers live in the developing world, producing 75% of the world's cotton), children are used to pick it. In Egypt one million children work picking cotton, in India hundreds of thousands of child workers do it. All three cotton-producing Central Asian republics -- Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan -- use students and forced labour during the two months of the year when cotton is picked, according to Andrew Stroehlein, director of media and information at the International Crisis Group.
Meanwhile, Fair Trade cotton represents, at present, less than 1% of global cotton flows (source: Fair Trade Foundation), and the global organic retail cotton market accounts for just 6% of all cotton traded (source: Organic Exchange).
Not only is it very difficult to trace the sourcing of cotton back through an incredibly complex supply chain, there's also a complicated labour ecosystem arranged around cotton. Bangladesh -- where twenty million people depend on the garment industry for employment -- buys 65% of its cotton annually from Uzbekistan. Garment exports account for a stunning 75% of Bangladesh's annual export income. Ban-and-boycott people need to consider that, in addition to not-necessarily-helping Uzbekistan, their bans and boycotts actively harm Bangladesh.
Uzbek children aren't taken out of school to harvest cotton -- the schools are closed for the two month cotton season and the children are set to work alongside their teachers (and even doctors and nurses) getting the harvest picked. It's a collective national effort supervised by the police, an obligation. But it isn't enough for us just to ask ourselves if we'd send our own privileged and protected children unpaid into the fields: we have to look at the specifics of life in Uzbekistan to understand why it happens.
Over 60% of the population lives in rural areas, where cotton-growing is the main industry. Almost 50% of the Uzbeki population is 16 or under. Cotton production is by far the biggest industry in the country; the whole economy is based on it, and wealth flowing in from cotton revenues has raised Uzbek life expectancy three to six years higher than that of surrounding Central Asian states, despite widespread environmental damage (toxic chemical sprays, the Aral Sea dried up, dust storms). These kinds of conditions haven't been prevalent in the UK since the 19th century -- a time when we, too, sent children up chimneys and down mines, thereby eventually achieving the kind of society which has the luxury of banning these activities by law.
"I think boycotting Uzbek cotton is an overreaction," says someone called Alanna on a bulletin board. "Considering all the ghastly forms of child exploitation you find in the world, condemning the Uzbeks because children harvest (along with their familes) seems excessive. I lived in Uzbekistan for 4 years, and many of my friends had childhood memories of picking cotton. They hated it, but it was only a few weeks every year, and they were not mistreated."
This April, Uzbekistan signed into law the ILO Minimum Age convention, which allows light work to be done by people as young as 13, but tries to raise the minimum working age in all signatory countries. It's unlikely that child labour will cease overnight, but it's likely to take less than the century or so it took in Britain, which didn't sign up to the ILO minimum age convention until 2000.
Meanwhile, those who still want to ban Uzbek cotton might want to extend their ban to all cotton. That's the only sure way to avoid cotton "dirtied" by the picking hands of children. They might also want to invest whatever spare money they have in Uzbek industries they do approve of, because history tends to show that better conditions generally come with better economies.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 10:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 10:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 10:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 10:31 am (UTC)-r
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 10:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 10:33 am (UTC)The question is, did we emerge from that period because it made us poor, or because it made us rich? Are we where we are today despite it or because of it? And are we right to think we can impose rich ethics on poor countries by refusing the redistribution of our wealth to their economies? It's a bit ironic, isn't it?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 10:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 10:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 10:41 am (UTC)WHY AM I EVEN ANSWERING THIS SERIOUSLY.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 10:42 am (UTC)O RLY?
Date: 2008-08-11 10:44 am (UTC)look how disappointed he is in you, bb :*(
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 10:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 11:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 11:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 11:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 11:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 11:19 am (UTC)Is it really "trolling through the internet" to spend hours researching the complexities of an ethical issue like this, or is a better definition of "trolling through the internet" just making some quick anonymous, inaccurate and insulting response?
What about you, Anon, are you concerned about who picked the cotton in the t-shirt you're wearing? If you are, do you think boycotting one country helps end child labour around the world, and do you care that you're endangering the livelihood of Bangladeshis with your ban?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 11:27 am (UTC)My late paternal grandmother, born in 1901, picked cotton as a child in rural Arkansas. Her average harvest day began at dawn with an empty sack, stopped at noon for a hard bread, lard, and sugar sandwich with a dipper of well water, then continued until dark with her sack weighing a hundred pounds or more, every day until the harvest was finished. She did this every year from the time she was first able to pull a sack until she married and was able to move off the farm to a city. She was neither black nor slave, but a German immigrant who came to the United States as a baby growing up on her papa's farm.
This kind of manual labor will continue in poor areas until such time as those farm economies improve enough to be able to afford mechanization. Nobody chops cotton by hand in Arkansas today, and one can hope the same will eventually occur in Uzbekistan and other poor areas.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 11:39 am (UTC)It is incredibly simplistic to say that a) the West's increasing wealth was why we eliminated child labour, and that b) even if it were the case, that this is one-size-fits-all model that will go for any culture or economy.
Increasing wealth is one factor among many, and there are plenty of very poor countries where child labour is a negligable factor in the economy. Crusading journalism and political activism play their part too.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 11:41 am (UTC)The interesting thing is that Western media reports are quick to use the phrase "Soviet-style" to condemn the present, highly-centralized Uzbeki state. But in fact during the Soviet period there was much greater mechanization of agriculture, and therefore much less dependence on child labour. What you're describing as a possible future for Uzbekistan is actually their "Soviet-style" past.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 11:44 am (UTC)I think we can agree on those points.
Having had the issue forced into your consciousness, do you think you'll be making a consumer boycott of clothes containing cotton made in Uzbekistan?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 11:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 12:11 pm (UTC)The World Health Organisation has said (http://www.euro.who.int/eprise/main/WHO/Progs/CHHUZB/life/20050131_3) that "Life expectancy (LE) in Uzbekistan is 3–6 years higher than in any other central Asian republic, which suggests that the population’s health is better". Now, this probably isn't much to do with the benignity of the Uzbek government, which is pretty appalling (though its centralised structure may help it provide a good centralised medical system) but it probably has something to do with the influx of Western wealth. Those "corrupt bureaucrats" are presumably spending their money at some point. No matter how much they hoarde, some will be going into the improvement of Uzbeki infrastructure. Something is improving Uzbek health, and it sure as hell isn't the air.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 12:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-11 12:33 pm (UTC)