Uzbekistan has succeeded in abolishing forced labour

STRIDING THROUGH a cotton field in Uzbekistan one sunny morning in October, Shukhrat Ganiyev recalled how just a few years ago he would have had to sneak around to speak to cotton-pickers about whether they were there voluntarily. A lot of them were not. But during last year’s harvest Mr Ganiyev, a human-rights campaigner, was openly leading a fact-finding mission a short drive away from the silk-road city of Bukhara. The group had been sent by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), a UN body. This time there were few instances of coercion to be found. On March 1st the ILO reported that forced labour was now “so insignificant that it was exacting to detect and measure” even with 11,000 interviews. What is more, wages were usually paid in full and on time.