April 29 National Press Club Headliners Panel to explore "The human cost of blue jeans: A progress report on child and forced labor in the cotton supply chain"

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Apr 24, 2019, 11:43 ET

WASHINGTON, April 24, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Human rights and labor experts will join the Uzbek ambassador to the U.S. and the head of the Uzbekistan's textile industry to discuss the status of child and forced labor in the country at a Headliners panel at 10 a.m. on Monday, April 29 in the Bloomberg Room.

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 for its list of commodities produced by forced or indentured child labor, saying the country had reduced such practices to "isolated incidents."

On the panel will be:

Ambassador Ilhom Haydarov, chairman of the Uzbek Textile Industry Association, a government ministry responsibly for the country's textile industry development, and former Uzbek ambassador to Ukraine;

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.

This news conference is open to credentialed media and members of the National Press Club free of charge, however registration is required. Please click here to register.

The National Press Club is located on the 13th Floor of the National Press Building at 529 14th St., NW, Washington, D.C.

Contact: Lindsay Underwood, [email protected], (202) 662-7561

SOURCE National Press Club