Every year for their entire history, the governments of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have systematically coerced their own citizens to cultivate and pick cotton, with the profits benefiting the government elite rather than the people. To harvest cotton last year, the Uzbek government forced over a million citizens to the fields, and the Turkmen government forced tens of thousands. Since neither government has changed its cotton production system it is inevitable that government-orchestrated forced labor will continue this harvest season, in violation of national and international law. In Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the world’s fifth and seventh-largest cotton exporters, the annual harvests began this week. Here are five key issues to monitor:

Streetcars made their last run in Washington, D.C. back in 1959. For the past 5 years DC City government is on track to rebuild the system, this time via a problematic public-private partnership. Plagued with delays and mismanagement, the new line is about to start service. More than $200 million has been spent to establish the first of what some hope will be several segments of new streetcar service in the growing city. Even prior to operation the D.C. Streetcar has stimulated economic development on the H Street Corridor, a long suffering neighborhood decimated by the 1968 riots.

One of the reasons the Accord on Fire and Building Safety is such an important safety program in Bangladesh is that they understand that dangerous workplaces are not just failures in building engineering or fire and electrical safety, but also of failures of a social system that ignores and excludes workers and denies them their voice.  Workers know the safety problems in their factories better than anyone else.  When they are denied the opportunity to report on those problems and suggest solutions, their workplaces are not safe.  That is why the Accord comes to the defense of workers who are courageous enough to voice their concerns about safety only to be fired or otherwise punished.  So should the Bangladeshi government and the industry association, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacture

I was in North Carolina last week, marching through the streets of Winston-Salem with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) to demand collective bargaining rights for farmworkers who harvest tobacco. As these workers shared their stories about unjust conditions in the fields and sub-poverty earnings, I was struck by the similarities between tobacco industry exploitation in my own country and what our partners in Malawi, the Center for Social Concern (CSC) and Tobacco and Allied Workers Union of Malawi (TOAWUM), are fighting against.