For two decades, children’s-rights defenders in Uzbekistan and internationally decried the practice, which was all the more repugnant because most of the money from the harvest went to a handful of government elites or their cronies.
The students, who were forced to pick cotton for little or no income, included primary schoolers as young as 6, child labor experts said.
Uzbek officials denied widespread exploitation of children in the harvest, but refused to let International Labor Organization inspectors in to the country to monitor the picking.
Finally, after years of pressure, in 2012 Uzbekistan outlawed the use of primary-school children to gather cotton. It still forces high school and university students into the fields like modern-day slaves.
Uzbekistan’s cotton harvest is a high-profile example of widespread child neglect, exploitation and abuse in the former Soviet Union.
The situation has become worse since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, children’s-rights defenders say.
Poverty is behind much of it. The transition from a planned to a market economy has been a struggle in many former Soviet states, making it harder for parents to earn a living and providing an inadequate social safety net.
In the late 1990s, just as Russia was emerging from its transition problems, its economy suffered from a global downturn.
That crisis had a major impact on children’s well-being, according to Peter Loudik, a foreign law specialist at the Law Library of Congress in Washington.
“Until 2003, payment of social assistance subsidies was constantly delayed, and even if money was received by children and parents having minor children, it did not have a positive impact on the economic situation in the family because of its insignificant amount and inflation,” Loudik said.
Poverty has led to too little income for food in many former Soviet households, meaning that hundreds of thousands of children experience hunger. In addition, many youngsters suffer neglect, being left to fend for themselves at home as their parents work long hours to make ends meet.
Physical violence against children has also increased since the Soviet republics became independent, children’s rights defenders say.
The UN and other international organizations have done several studies on child neglect and abuse in Moldova, one of the poorest countries in the former Soviet Union.
Two of the starkest findings in a UN Children’s Fund report were that half of children 2 to 14 had suffered violence at home and that a third of the deaths of children under 3 were from violence.
The report, based on a survey of 12,000 households in 2012, concluded that poverty was a key reason for neglect and abuse.
Other reasons, it said, were that beating was considered an acceptable way to discipline children and that most parents didn’t know how to discipline children in constructive ways.
In addition to poverty, lack of legislation to protect children has contributed to their neglect and abuse. For example, a number of Soviet countries have not laws that make mistreating children a crime.
Some countries, such as Russia, began passing child-protection laws in the mid- to late 1990s.
But most have not been enforced. One reason is a disconnect between those tasked with implementing the laws and those tasked with enforcing them, including social-service agencies and law enforcement. Another reason for the enforcement gap is lack of resources.
The subject of child neglect and abuse simmers below the surface in the former Soviet Union most of the time, with people knowing it’s occurring but many unaware of the extent of the problem.
But sometimes the problem surfaces because of a horrendous murder of a child or because an influential figure brings abuse to public attention.
In 2009, for example, President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia needed to take urgent action to reduce violent crime against, and sexual abuse of, children.
About 126,000 children had been victims of violent crime in 2008, he said, including 1,914 who had been murdered.
Another 760,000 “were living in socially dangerous conditions” — that is, environments of neglect and abuse.
Russia passed two key pieces of legislation in the late 1990s that were supposed to afford substantial protections to children.
They were the Family Code and the Law on the Basic Guarantees of the Rights of the Child.
In practice, the legislation has failed to protect many neglected or abused children, according to Peter Loudik of the Law Library of Congress in Washington.
“All of the typical problems” in “the implementation of Russian legislation and the (ineffective) functioning of government institutions are inherent in the area of children’s rights protection,” he said. “Among these problems are a lack of separation of powers between the federal and regional levels of authorities; contradictions within the legislation; no defined division between federal and state budgets in regard to the payment of state subsidies to children; (inadequate) maintenance of social-support institutions; and absence of working mechanisms that would provide for rehabilitation and integration of children with disabilities.”
A UN special children’s representative noted after visiting Armenia this year that our country has the same bureaucratic snarls and lack of resources that have prevented Russia from protecting children.
Armenia created an action plan for protecting children, including a national commission that is supposed to oversee the efforts. But the commission has been ineffective, the UN representative, Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, suggested.
She urged the government to come up with a “comprehensive child protection strategy.”
Part of that effort, she said, should include giving the National Commission for the Protection of the Rights of the Child “coordinating and supervisory functions and binding decision-making powers” for protecting children.
In addition, she noted, the government should give local child-protection officials the resources they need to be successful.
The bottom line on combatting child neglect and abuse in the former Soviet Union is that it will take time to alleviate the poverty that fuels much it, but there’s no excuse for the bureaucratic snarls that prevent child-protection programs from being implemented and enforced.
If national leaders make children’s rights a priority, and punish the bureaucrats who fail to implement and enforce programs, then children will begin to obtain the protection they deserve.
Armine Sahakyan is a human rights activist based in Armenia.
