Uzbekistan

Geography, Climate, and Environment
Uzbekistan was a landlocked nation of deserts, mountains, and steppes.

United States
The country served as a transit point for United States troops and supplies during the war in neighboring Afghanistan in 2001. After the rise of Islamic militants in 2014, the United States requested Uzbek help in preventing the spread of the insurgency in order to stabilize Afghanistan and offset Russian influence in the region. In exchange, the State Department elevated their human rights record in July 2015, stating that the nation didn't meet "minimum standards" to end human trafficking, but it made significant efforts.

Economy
Uzbekistan's government made an estimated $1 billion a year from cotton sales, and the harvest mobilizations of roughly a million people that dated to Soviet times were characterized as a patriotic duty. Wihle many officials argued that citizens picked cotton voluntarily, it intensified recruitment of adults and older teenagers using a coercive approach. This came after initial steps to bar children from picking cotton in 2012, which were expanded in 2013. Still facing the same government-imposed harvesting quotas, local authorities expanded mobilizations of public employees, such as teachers, nurses, and bureaucrats, as well as private sector workers. Its Tier 3 ranking in the 2013 and 2014 reports helped a coalition of human rights groups organize a boycott of Uzbek cotton by more than 2 apparel manufacturers and retailers. To reinforce the state-orchestrated forced labor system that underpinned its position as the world's fifth-largest cotton exporter, local authorities conducted regular arrests, intimidation, and harassment of labor activists to conceal the annual mobilization.