Dear Mr. Haeusgen:

Thank you for your communication dated July 12, 2023, in response to our letter from June 20, 2023. While we appreciate your commitment to support the scope of laws designed to end child and forced labor, we express deep concern about your approach to the situation in Turkmenistan.

All cotton originating in Turkmenistan is produced by the state with the systematic and widespread forced labor of hundreds of thousands of teachers, healthcare workers, other state employees, and sometimes children. There is a well-documented record of reporting and communication from international expert bodies, finding that Turkmenistan has made insufficient progress to end its state-imposed forced labor system in cotton, including from the ILO Committee on the Application of Standards and the UN Human Rights Committee.

Turkmenistan does not import cotton, which means that all cotton used in the textile industry in Turkmenistan is produced with state-imposed forced labor.

Doing business with the textile industry in Turkmenistan and providing machinery and equipment to cotton ginneries, spinning mills, fabrics mills, sewing units, and other production units in the textile manufacturing industry of Turkmenistan plays a major role in supporting the state-imposed forced labor system in cotton production.

1. The German companies that sell machines and equipment for usage in the Turkmen textile industry benefit from the forced labor system.
2. They also support the perpetuation of the forced labor system and, by facilitating the production of forced labor Turkmen cotton into finished and semi-finished products, they facilitate Turkmen cotton entering global supply chains, in violation of import ban regulations and legal and ethical obligations on companies not to use goods made with forced labor.

For this reason, you should require your members to end business relationships with Turkmenistan’s textile industry. Instead, you should use your engagement with Turkmen stakeholders to pressure the government of Turkmenistan to end its forced labor system...

While the OECD standards encourage lead firms to work with suppliers towards continuous improvement, the standards also account for situations where mitigation is not feasible or because of the severity of the adverse impact, where the only responsible course of action is disengagement, such as contexts of state-imposed forced labor. This is due to the inability to conduct due diligence on the ground and the fact that no company has or will have enough leverage to work towards any improvement in practice. In situations of state-imposed forced labor, such as in Turkmenistan, businesses are unable to prevent or mitigate human rights abuses. There are no valid means for companies to verify that any cotton picked in Turkmenistan is free of forced labor, nor can companies take action to prevent the use of forced labor in the Turkmen cotton harvest. Companies cannot even enter the country to conduct their own due diligence...

In your letter, you noted that “the European Union supports economic cooperation with the country and regularly reviews the human rights situation in direct talks with Turkmenistan”. We would like to bring to your attention that the European Parliament has not approved the EU-Turkmenistan Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) because of strong concerns about human rights violations committed by the government of Turkmenistan. In 2019, the Parliament adopted a resolution setting out concrete human rights benchmarks that it expects to see sustainable progress on by Turkmenistan before giving its consent to the PCA...

[full response attached]