The human cost of blue jeans: The status of child, forced labor in cotton supply chain, April 29

Human rights and labor experts will join the Uzbek ambassador to discuss the status of child and forced labor in the country at a National Press Club Headliners panel at 10 a.m. Monday, April 29, in the Bloomberg Room.

The free event is open only to credentialed media and Club members. Registration is required.

Human rights groups, activists and media for years raised the alarm about child and forced labor in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, prompting many clothing manufacturers to take a hard look at their supply chains and pull out of the countries.

Now, after years of international monitoring by the International Labor Organization, the World Bank and other groups, passage of new laws and a government commitment to abide by international labor standards, Uzbekistan’s cotton may be back in play on the world market.

The U. S. Labor Department on March 31 removed Uzbek cotton from its list of commodities produced by forced or indentured child labor, saying the country had reduced such practices to “isolated incidents.”

Panelists include:

Ambassador Javlon Vakhabov, Uzbekistan’s ambassador to the United States;

Eric Gottwald, deputy director of the International Labor Rights Forum, where he leads programs to end labor abuses in high-risk sectors such as cotton and seafood;

Oxana Lipcanu, project coordinator and technical advisor for the International Labour Organization’s third-party monitoring of child and forced labor in Uzbekistan;

Steve Swerdlow, human rights researcher and attorney specializing in Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch.