How would you feel if you did not even have control over your own life? What if someone else was controlling how you live your life? It is hard to believe a situation like this could even exist. However, in Uzbekistan, this is a common situation for the four million children involved in child labor. The Uzbek government uses child labor to keep its cotton industry running. Children are used as slaves to harvest all of the cotton, with little to no pay. More than half of the child slaves are exposed to the worst of child labor. Child labor in Uzbekistan is a human rights violation for many reasons. First, if children are slaves, they cannot get a proper education. Second, child labor puts children’s lives at risk. To begin, children cannot become educated if they are slaves. For example, children working in the fields and harvesting cotton are not allowed to leave or refuse to work. If they do, the children could be faced with harsh consequences, such as detention. Many children fell ill while working, and parents who tried to remove their children from the fields faced job loss and other severe consequences (Kennedy 1). This means that if children are in the cotton fields always working, they will never get a chance to go…show more content… First, children who are slaves are unable to attend school to get an education. Next, the extreme conditions of child labor threaten the lives of child slaves. Today, there are many companies that unknowingly use cotton from Uzbekistan in their products. By boycotting these companies that do use Uzbekistan cotton, it can help spread the message and finally put an end to child labor. Familiar clothing companies such as H&M, GAP, and Forever 21 are noted to have been part of the group of companies that use Uzbekistan cotton in their products. Everyone can play a big part in ending child labor, to help these Uzbek children break away from their chains that tie them to child