Every year from August to November, Turkmenistan, the world’s 14th biggest cotton producer, undergoes a massive agricultural mobilization. It’s during this time that the government drafts tens of thousands of public-sector workers—teachers, doctors and nurses among them—to harvest cotton or pay for pickers who can take their place.
Despite efforts by the international community to intervene, the problem has only worsened, according to new findings by Turkmen.News and the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, both frontline members of the Cotton Campaign, a coalition of brands, investors and labor organizations working to end state-imposed forced labor and child labor in the cotton industry.
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While doctors in regional hospitals and teachers in some schools were able to bow out of the 2024 harvest, the report said, public authorities allowed no such exceptions in 2025. All civil servants had to fulfill a daily quota of 45–50 kilograms of cotton in temperatures that can easily hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the fields or face threats, abuse and the loss of wages or employment.
The Turkmen government, which owns all land and leases some of it to farmers, has complete control over the cotton production system. Even the trade unions that are meant to protect workers answer only to officials.
“Basically, orders come from the President himself,” Ruslan Myatiev, editor of Turkmen.News, said in a recent webinar. “He defines how much cotton Turkmenistan as a whole must produce this coming season. It’s the state that provides farmers with cotton seeds, with minerals, with chemicals, with fertilizers. It’s also the state that defines the prices at which it buys cotton from the farmers.”
The backsliding has been both disappointing and confusing for people like Cara Priestley, international and thematic advocacy manager at Anti-Slavery International. Following sustained international scrutiny, including a decade of advocacy by the Cotton Campaign, the Turkmen government agreed to engage with the International Labour Organization, even allowing the agency to monitor its cotton harvest for the first time in 2023. The following year, the government worked with the ILO to adopt a roadmap of cooperation detailing “priority actions” aimed at reducing conscription.
But then officials began to run increasing interference, leading treaty bodies such as the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to raise concerns about the reforms that were still urgently needed.
“So, the issue is clearly not lack of clarity about what needs to happen,” Priestley said. “The recommendations are clear, but the problem is implementation, and unfortunately, the government is far from implementing the reforms that are needed to adequately address the root causes of forced labor.”
For Anna Cavazzini, a German member of the European Parliament who served as a lead negotiator of the EU’s Forced Labour Regulation, state-imposed forced labor in Turkmenistan’s cotton supply chain isn’t a distant abstraction but one that touches the bloc’s markets, retailers and “ultimately, the EU’s shared responsibility as consumers, policy makers and global citizens.”
“This is not isolated abuse; it is institutionalized exploitation,” she said. “The implementation of this ban and a firm, unyielding stance will be critical to eradicating human rights abuses from our value chains. As there is no remediation possible in case of state-opposed forced labor, as is the case in Turkmenistan, this will only be possible through full disengagement.”
The United States has banned all cotton and cotton goods from Turkmenistan through a dedicated Withhold Release Order since 2018. Together with the EU’s Forced Labour Regulation, bans on forced labor in Canada and Mexico through the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and pushes for stricter import prohibitions in Australia and the United Kingdom, what this adds up to is the beginnings of a coordinated, multi-jurisdictional front that could make sourcing Turkmen cotton a business liability, not just a humanitarian one.
And it isn’t only companies sourcing directly from Turkmenistan that could be allowing forced labor to enter their supply chains, the report said. Global brands sourcing cotton yarn, fabric and products from intermediary countries are also significantly at risk of breaching existing or upcoming rules.
“State-enforced forced labor isn’t an isolated problem that is just confined within Turkmenistan’s borders,” said Anasuya Syam, human rights and trade policy director at the Human Trafficking Legal Center. “Cotton harvested under conditions of state-enforced labor is entering global markets through yarn, fabric and finished goods manufactured in third countries.”
Turkey and Pakistan, in particular, have become leading importers of Turkmen cotton before it enters European and other international markets. According to trade data, Turkey imported $96.6 million worth of cotton and semi-finished cotton products from Turkmenistan in 2024, while Pakistan imported $33.8 million.
“The absence of direct sourcing relationships with Turkmen producers does not eliminate either risk or responsibility,” Syam said. “And what makes the Turkmen case especially significant for global brands and retailers is that this isn’t something that occurs in a single farm or factory. The forced labor system is embedded within the governance structure of the cotton sector itself.”
Syam is unequivocal about what needs to happen: Companies must move supply chain mapping beyond Tier 1 suppliers to drive increased visibility into their procurement process, especially when sourcing from countries known to import Turkmen cotton. International governments, too, must collaborate by sharing shipment risk indicators, entity lists, importer data and detention outcomes—and that’s just for starters.
Laura Murphy, a human rights professor at Sheffield Hallam University whose research on Uyghur forced labor has been instrumental in shaping policy recommendations, said she read the report from cover to cover, something that rarely happens.
If she were a betting person, she’d count on Turkmen cotton making it into the EU’s Forced Labour Regulation database.
In the end, Murphy said, what will drive meaningful change is government action that holds companies accountable. She’s seen that happen with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the United States.
“U.S. enforcement has, in fact, compelled companies to shift their supply chains,” she said. “We can be out there writing reports over and over and documenting this stuff, but until governments step in, there’s very little companies will do to change their supply chains—unless there are negative consequences to keeping the status quo.”
Like Myatiev from Turkmen.News, Aynabat Yaylymova, founder of the Progres Foundation, another contributor to the report, is Turkmen. For her, the issue is a deeply visceral one.
“Any business, any government that does business with the government of Turkmenistan is stepping into the territory of profound human misery and neglect,” she said. “Autocratic rule from Ashgabat systematically degrades human agency and well-being. It’s man-made suffering driven by the government’s resistance to reform and its deep aversion to economic modernization.”
Behind all the data, policy analysis and talking points, Yaylymova said, is the story of innumerable Turkmen men, women and children who are trapped in a cycle of poverty and violence.
“Progress should not be measured by our mere physical survival at the hand of the tyrannical regime,” she added. “It should be measured by our ability, by Turkmens’ ability to flourish, to create and contribute to the development of their society and the country.”
