Daewoo International Corporation, the largest single processor of cotton from Uzbekistan, has acknowledged it purchases Uzbek cotton harvested using forced labor. Yet Daewoo continues to reap direct benefits from the authoritarian Uzbek government for its investment in the cotton sector, and earn profits from trading in tainted cotton that may ultimately find its way into the clothes we wear. 

Tell Daewoo its profiting from forced labor has to end!

Cotton is a state-controlled business in Uzbekistan, feeding the coffers of the elite on the backs of citizens. Each year, the government forcibly mobilizes farmers to grow cotton and more than a million men, women and children to harvest it. This is one of the world’s largest systems of state-orchestrated forced labor. Eleven people died in the latest harvest, including Amirbek Rakhmatov, a six-year-old boy who suffocated under a pile of cotton during a nap while accompanying his mother to the fields.

Daewoo has invested in the Uzbek cotton sector for two decades, for which the government provides Daewoo discounted cotton prices, tax incentives and preferential loans. The Cotton Campaign, which ILRF coordinates, has engaged Daewoo directly since 2012. The company has steadfastly refused to act, in stark violation of its human rights duties as a company owned by a member of the United Nations Global Compact, POSCO, and headquartered in a member state of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), South Korea.

Daewoo must be held to account for its participation in this unconscionable violation of human rights. Join the 15,000 people around the world who have sent a message to Daewoo now!

Abby Mills, International Labor Rights Forum via mail.salsalabs.net