The Turkmen government backtracked during the 2025 cotton harvest on small steps taken over the previous two years to reduce the use of forced labor, the Cotton Campaign coalition said in a new report.
Progress toward eliminating forced labor is not necessarily linear, and positive developments in one harvest can be reversed the following year without sustained political will or market pressure.
The report – “Cotton from Turkmenistan: State-enforced forced labor during annual cotton harvest, high risk in global supply chains » – presents findings from independent civil society monitoring of Turkmenistan’s 2025 cotton harvest by Turkmen.News and Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights. The Progress Foundation also continued the report.
During the 2023 and 2024 harvests, the Cotton Campaign reported that the Turkmen government took steps to reduce state-imposed forced labor, namely the mobilization of some state employees into the fields.
In its 2025 report, covering the 2024 harvest, the Cotton Campaign said: “Public authorities did not mobilize or extort doctors working in some regional hospitals and teachers working in some schools, although they continued to subject all other groups of state employees to forced labor. »
In the just-released report covering the 2025 harvest, the Cotton Campaign notes that this small measure – which does not require doctors and teachers to harvest cotton – has been reversed.
“During the 2025 cotton harvest, the government of Turkmenistan forced all groups of state employees – including teachers and technical staff of schools, doctors and nurses, as well as employees of public service organizations and cultural centers – to harvest cotton or pay replacement pickers. »
Turkmenistan is one of the most closed countries in the world. It comes in at the bottom of rankings like Freedom House’s Freedom in the World (with a rating of 1 out of 100). Monitoring the cotton harvest is therefore a risky business. The civil society organizations involved – Turkmen.News and Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights – work from exile and monitor the harvests through a network of independent informants inside the country. While the International Labor Organization (ILO) was authorized to carry out controls in 2024 and 2025, the Cotton Campaign highlighted that “interference with their control constituted a persistent challenge during both harvests”.
The Cotton Campaign report is detailed, covering not only the realities of forced labor in Turkmenistan’s cotton industry, but also how the agricultural sector operates in Turkmenistan, how corruption enables the forced labor system, and how goods produced through forced labor end up in global supply chains.
Turkmenistan is the 14th largest cotton producer in the world and has significant trade links with Turkey and Pakistan, but also with European countries such as Bulgaria, Portugal, Italy and Poland. Turkey alone imported $96.6 million worth of cotton products from Turkmenistan in 2024, including cotton yarn, fabric and fiber, as well as cotton waste. That year, Pakistan imported $33.8 million worth of cotton products from Turkmenistan.
“It is not only moral, but also legally imperative to eliminate Turkmen cotton from forced labor from global supply chains,” the Cotton Campaign said. The United States, Canada, Mexico and the EU have passed laws banning the importation of products made with forced labor, and discussions are underway in a half-dozen other countries – including France, Germany, Norway, the EU, Thailand, South Korea and New Zealand – on similar laws or additional regulations.
Eliminating forced labor requires sustained effort on the part of a government and, unfortunately, autocratic governments rarely decide to dismantle such systems without external pressure. The example of Uzbekistan is revealing, as the Cotton Campaign explains:
In Uzbekistan, where the government has used systemic forced labor for crops for decades, consistent action over the years from all stakeholder groups – including UN agencies, policymakers, brands and retailers, as well as civil society – has been key to pressuring the government to reform its system until systemic state-imposed forced labor is eliminated in 2021.
And even that is not enough. The risk of forced labor remains present in Uzbekistan, given, among other things, slowing progress in expanding workers’ rights and continued restrictions on freedom of association and expression.