The state monopoly on the cotton industry, which has been in place for a century, has been abolished. Rights groups are reporting that officials no longer fro march citizens of usbekestan into the fields. The i l o reported that forced labor was now so insignificant that they found it hard to quantify and detect because there are so few people saying that they were forced.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva left office with a sky-high approval rating, having raised millions from poverty—but was then convicted of corruption. Now he wants his old job back. Forced labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields, once widespread, is swiftly vanishing. And an old hypothesis confirmed: birds get more colourful the closer they live to the equator.
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