The Cotton Campaign’s call comes as seven German business associations and consulting firms held an event in Düsseldorf, Germany yesterday (27 June) encouraging investments in Turkmenistan’s apparel and oil and gas industries.
The event’s attendees are said to have represented thousands of German companies and it went ahead despite the Cotton Campaign writing letters to the hosts urging for it to be cancelled.
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The event titled ‘Turkmenistan Business Day: Petrochemical, construction and textile industry, 27 June 2023 in Düsseldorf’ took place on the initiative of Commit Project Partners GmbH and the Turkmenistan Chamber of Industry and Commerce in a face-to-face format at the Düsseldorf Business Club.
Just Style had not received a response from event organisers Commit Group at the time of going to press.
However, the Cotton Campaign is urging all German business associations, consultancies, multi-stakeholder initiatives, and supply chain actors to cut ties with Turkmenistan’s textile industry to avoid benefitting or profiting from forced labour.
The NGO explains cotton originating in Turkmenistan is produced by the state with the systematic and widespread forced labour of hundreds of thousands of teachers, healthcare workers, other state employees, and sometimes children.
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By GlobalDataPlus, the Cotton Campaign highlights that sourcing cotton products from suppliers in Turkmenistan or from suppliers in third countries that use Turkmen cotton in the manufacturing of these products is in violation of the German human rights due diligence law (“The Supply Chain Act”), which came into effect in January 2023.
The Cotton Campaign points out it’s impossible for any international company to conduct any credible due diligence on the ground to prevent or remedy forced labour in cotton due to the country’s state-imposed forced labour system.
More broadly, the Cotton Campaign states that international companies are unable to address labour rights abuses in any sector in Turkmenistan, including gas and oil, because there are no independent trade unions and the government has taken so-called “harsh action” against anyone who speaks out about human rights violations.
The Cotton Campaign’s coordinator Raluca Dumitrescu says: “The German co-hosts of this Investment Forum have failed to conduct even the most basic human rights due diligence in their selection of partners. Encouraging sourcing of textiles from Turkmenistan, as long as Turkmen cotton continues to be produced with state-imposed forced labour, defies national laws governing human rights due diligence and supply chains that bind global brands and retailers, including the Supply Chain Act in Germany.”
Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum (GLJ-ILRF) Forced Labor Program Director Allison Gill, which hosts the Cotton Campaign adds: “The ILO and the Human Rights Committee, among other authoritative bodies, have repeatedly urged the government of Turkmenistan to end its forced labour system. All German supply chain actors, multi-stakeholder initiatives, and government agencies should heed these calls and urge the Turkmen government to end reprisals against independent monitors who document labour conditions in the cotton fields.”
