Speak free

Freedom United's Executive Director, Joanna Ewart-James, spoke at the UN Global Compact Network U.K.’s Business & Human Rights Summit 2021 where she explored how some forced labor systems are organized by governments, embedding forced labor into our economic systems and creating a dependency on exploitation. Systems of state-imposed forced labor mean businesses can't just rely on governments to respect human rights – businesses themselves must interrogate their supply chains and take responsibility for rights abuses. If you missed the event, you can read Joanna Ewart-James'

A new joint report by leading independent Turkmen human rights groups exposes systemic forced labor during the 2020 cotton harvest in Turkmenistan, said the Cotton Campaign, a coalition of organizations including Freedom United. The report, Review of the Use of Forced Labor in Turkmenistan During the 2020 Cotton Harvest, was released today by Turkmen.news and the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, both members of the Cotton Campaign coalition. The report is based on evidence documented by trained civil society monitors and local sources of information in four of Turkmenistan’s five