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White Gold: The True Cost of Cotton

  • ISBN  1-904523-08-0
  • Publication Date  31-12-05
  • Type  Report

This internationally acclaimed report exposes how the billion-dollar cotton industry is causing an environmental catastrophe and human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, Central Asia.

White Gold highlights the disastrous demise of the Aral Sea as the rivers that once fed it have been diverted to irrigate cotton fields. The report also draws attention to the endemic use of forced child labour in the annual cotton harvest. Uzbekistan is unique for the scale of forced child labour - hundreds of thousands of children are forced to labour in the fields undergoing arduous work for little or no pay.

Detailed investigations by EJF expose the use of cotton revenues in Uzbekistan to support a corrupt, brutal and coercive dictatorship.