Swedish multinational clothing company H&M banned its cotton suppliers from buying cotton from Turkmenistan in December 2015, according to the company’s website. The company imposed a similar ban on cotton supplies from Uzbekistan in 2013.

 

H&M’s ban is based on the company’s policy against using underage workers and forced labour. In Turkmenistan and neighbouring Uzbekistan, using forced labour and child labour in the cotton industry is a practice that had been widely used in the Soviet Union when participation in agricultural harvesting was mandatory for schoolchildren from rural areas and university students.