The Cotton Campaign, a global coalition of human rights, labor, investor and business organizations dedicated to eradicating child labor and forced labor in cotton production, has urged the US government downgrade Uzbekistan to its lowest level in its upcoming trafficking report in response to the country's continued use of forced labour in cotton harvests.

 

According to the Cotton Campaign report, the Uzbek government in 2015 not only failed to comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act minimum standards of prohibiting, punishing, deterring and taking serious efforts to eliminate trafficking, but also continued to implement a state policy of forced labour.