Executive Summary

Turkmenistan–which ranks 14th in global cotton production–is one of the most repressive countries in the world.1 It exerts control over all aspects of public life and severely represses all civic freedoms.2 The government uses widespread and systematic state-imposed forced labor in the annual cotton harvest. Every year between August–November, public authorities force state employees to pick cotton or pay for replacement pickers under threat of penalty, including loss of employment or reduction of work hours or pay.

This report presents the findings of independent civil society monitoring of the 2024 cotton harvest by Cotton Campaign’s frontline partners Turkmen.News and the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, and highlights key routes through which Turkmen cotton enters global markets.

In 2024, for the second consecutive year, the Turkmen government took some steps to reduce state-imposed forced labor in the harvest. Public authorities did not mobilize or extort doctors working in some regional hospitals and teachers working in some schools, although they continued to subject all other groups of state employees to forced labor. The Turkmen government did not make public statements prohibiting forced labor or hold government officials who used forced labor accountable.

In the 2024 harvest, the Turkmen government increased the rates for picking cotton. In some districts, this incentivized voluntary picking among the rural population. However, in many cases, voluntary pickers worked in the place of state employees, from whom money had been extorted to pay for replacement pickers. In 2024, the Turkmen government revised the Hazardous Work List to include cotton picking and classify it as harmful work, prohibited for children under 18. While this is encouraging, this step alone is not enough to prevent child labor–which is primarily driven by poverty in combination with public authorities forcing adults to pick cotton or pay for a replacement. Consequently, in 2024, increased rates for picking also led to an increase in child
labor, with children often working alongside their families to earn additional income. Other children worked as replacement pickers.

The Turkmen government maintains complete control over the cotton production system: it establishes an annual production quota, sets the price at which it will purchase cotton from farmers, and determines the prices for machinery and inputs. Cotton production quotas are enforced on farmers under the threat of penalty, including fines, destruction of private vegetable crops, and loss of land. In 2024, the government increased procurement prices for cotton, which it does every five years. While farmers welcomed this development, they reported that the prices of inputs, including seeds and fertilizers, fuel, irrigation water, and mechanical services have doubled, making it difficult to cover their production costs.

Following a decade of independent civil society monitoring of the harvest and policy advocacy by the Cotton Campaign and its partners, the Turkmen government has taken some preliminary steps towards addressing the use of systemic state-imposed forced labor in the harvest. In 2021, the government accepted engagement with the ILO and since then, it signed two consecutive Roadmaps for Collaboration. In the 2023 and 2024 harvests, it took some steps to reduce forced labor in the harvest. Turkmen.News, Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights and the broader Cotton Campaign coalition welcome these developments. However, it is still unclear if the Turkmen government has the political will necessary to eradicate forced labor. Not only does it continue to use widespread and systematic forced labor of state employees, but it also suppresses fundamental rights and freedoms, including freedoms of movement, expression, and association–which are critical to combat forced labor and ensure sustainable reforms. All civil society organizations that are publicly critical of this repressive regime, including Turkmen.News and the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, must work from exile, and the independent labor monitors and informants who provide evidence of forced labor conditions during the harvest, do so at great personal risk.

The Turkmen government allowed the ILO to conduct monitoring of the annual cotton harvest. The ILO’s 2024 harvest monitoring report describes challenges and limitations of its monitoring, including that ILO monitors did not receive consent to access specific farms or state institutions.3 In fact, Turkmen.News monitors reported on a particular instance where the authorities prevented state employees at a medical facility from meeting with ILO monitors. The employees who were allowed to speak with the ILO had been selected and ‘coached’ to falsely claim that state employees had not been mobilized to pick cotton. Details of this case are provided in this report.

In another case that raises questions about Turkmenistan’s willingness to end forced labor and create an enabling environment for civil society and labor rights, the Turkmen government retaliated against Turkmen.News director, Ruslan Myatiev, for his human rights activism. In 2024, at the Turkmen government’s request, Türkiye–the primary importer of Turkmen cotton products– imposed a retaliatory travel ban against Myatiev. Details are provided in the annex. The forced labor system provides ample opportunities for personal enrichment for those in positions of power, which creates disincentives for reform at different levels of government, and should be explicitly addressed through measures that increase accountability and transparency of the sector. Within the forced labor system, public authorities, heads of state institutions and stateowned cotton collection centers and cotton gins, among other actors, have the opportunity to extort money from employees and farmers; embezzle money from payments collected for replacement workers and other harvest expenses; or facilitate forced labor by recruiting replacement workers for fees.

Urgent Need For Reform, With An Emphasis On Enabling Rights

As the ILO recognized in its revised Hard to see, harder to count handbook, “state-imposed forced labor operates through a pervasively coercive wider social context marked by a general lack of civic freedoms and a state apparatus that generates powerful coercive pressures.”4 This form of forced labor “creates an environment that renders its victims much less likely to speak freely”, where “non-cooperation entails a systemic risk that is often more implicit than overt.”5 For these reasons, it is vital that reforms to eliminate the use of state-imposed forced labor in Turkmenistan’s cotton harvest address the root causes of forced labor and center fundamental rights–especially freedom of association, freedom of expression, and collective bargaining rights. Governments and international organizations should increase political and economic pressure
on the Turkmen government to make real progress in eliminating state-imposed forced labor. Turkmenistan should expand the measures taken in the 2023 and 2024 harvests through deeper and meaningful changes that address root causes, protect labor rights, and empower workers and farmers. In Uzbekistan, where the government had also been using systemic forced labor in the harvest, consistent action by all stakeholder groups–including UN bodies, policy makers, brands and retailers, and civil society–was essential to pressure the government to reform its system. The Uzbekistan experience also shows that without expanding workers’ fundamental rights, reforms of a primarily economic nature are not enough to achieve decent work. In
Uzbekistan, forced labor risks and other rights violations in the cotton sector persist as a result of ongoing restrictions on workers’ freedom of association, government coercion over farmers, and a lack of accountability for private and state actors threatening and intimidating labor rights monitors and workers.

“Technical” solutions such as the expansion of machine harvesting, which would eliminate the need for handpicking, are unable to effectively address the root causes of forced labor. The Turkmen government’s reforms to end forced labor should prioritize the empowerment of workers to organize and assert collective agency, creating an enabling environment and the conditions for legitimate social dialogue and bargaining. At the same time, the government should increase farmers’ autonomy and allow human rights activists and independent labor rights monitors to operate freely without fear of retaliation.

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