In 2018, Uzbekistan made moderate efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor. The government took active measures to prevent the use of forced child labor in the cotton harvest, including by issuing temporary regulations for labor conditions in organized cotton picking, reiterating the legal bans on using forced labor or child labor, raising the price paid to farmers for cotton and the wages paid to pickers, and sanctioning 169 officials for using forced labor. However, children in Uzbekistan still engage in the worst forms of child labor, including forced labor in scrap metal collection. Laws prohibiting the commercial sexual exploitation of children do not meet international standards. The government also did not disaggregate criminal law enforcement data for forced labor cases to clarify which cases, if any, involved the worst forms of child labor. In addition, there are gaps in labor law enforcement, such as the decision by the government-sponsored Coordination Council on Child Labor and Forced Labor not to conduct its own harvest monitoring and an insufficient number of labor inspectors to cover the workforce adequately. Follow the link to read the full report: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/child-labor/uzbekistan
