The Turkmen government backtracked during the 2025 cotton harvest on small steps taken in the previous two years to lesson the usage of forced labor, the Cotton Campaign coalition said in a new report.
Progress on eliminating forced labor is not necessarily linear, and positive developments in one harvest can be unwound the following year without sustained political will and market pressure.
The report – “Turkmenistan Cotton: State-Imposed Forced Labor in the Annual Cotton Harvest, High Risk in Global Supply Chains” – presents the findings of independent civil society monitoring of the 2025 cotton harvest in Turkmenistan by Turkmen.News and Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights. The Progres Foundation also continued to the report.
During the 2023 and 2024 harvest, 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 their 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.”
