Forced child labour pays for the cheap clothes we buy.

Take Action now and stop it.

BBC Newsnight’s special report from Uzbekistan corroborated EJF’s own filmed investigation to prove beyond doubt the use of forced child labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry – an industry that supplies much of the cotton we buy in the high street.

Showing the use of state security personnel to force children in to the fields, the undercover investigation was another damning expose of what really goes into our clothes and cotton products and a further indictment of the Uzbek authorities that treat their people as slave nation.

The BBC Newsnight programme reveals direct links from High Street brands to cotton in Uzbekistan.

Watch the BBC Newsnight expose – and then take action.

Do you know where your cotton comes from and if it has been produced using forced child labour or hazardous, toxic pesticides?

Now is the time to find out. As a consumer you can often exert more influence than as a voter: your purchasing decisions can – and do – change the way companies do business, they can change the world.

Demand that your retailer gives a 100% commitment that no child labour has been used in their cotton and that they don’t buy any cotton that was grown in Uzbekistan. Insist that they label all cotton garments with the country of origin of the cotton.

Don’t take NO for an answer….


Watch the BBC Newsnight expose.

Take action and send an online letter direct to the heads of major retailers

Support EJF and change the way cotton is produced around the world to make it ethical and sustainable.

• Uzbekistan is the third largest cotton exporter in the world and about one in four of all cotton garments sold in the UK contain a percentage of Uzbek cotton fibres.
  
• Over 200,000 children are forced by the Uzbek State into the fields to pick cotton.
  
• The Aral sea, once the world’s 4th largest inland body of water is now just 15% of its former size – drained to support Uzbek cotton production. All 24 native species of fish have disappeared and the thousands of people who depended upon the sea for food, income and employment have been left destitute.
  
• Each kilo of cotton grown in Uzbekistan consumes 20,000 litres of water – 5 pints for just one cotton bud.
  
• Cotton uses more dangerous and toxic insecticides, more than any other single crop.
  
• Cotton is the world’s most valuable non-food agricultural product.
  
• Most of Uzbekistans cotton ends up back in the European and American market.
  

EJF has been investigating the cotton production industry and campaigned to end the abuses in cotton production in Uzbekistan and around the world since 2004. Support us and change the world. It doesn’t have to be this way.