Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2020, published 109th ILC session (2021)

Employment Policy Convention, 1964 (No. 122) - China (Ratification: 1997)

The Committee notes the observations made by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) regarding the application of the Convention by the Government of China, received on 15 September 2020, which are also being considered within the framework of its examination of the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111). In its observations, the ITUC alleges that, since the Government submitted its most recent report on the application of the Convention in 2017, the Government of China has been engaging in a programme involving the extensive use of forced labour of the Uyghur and other minorities for agriculture and industrial activities throughout the Uyghur Autonomous Region in violation of the right to freely chosen employment set out in Article 1(2) of the Convention. The ITUC alleges that the Government’s program includes key components referred to as “poverty alleviation”, vocational training, re-education through labour and “de-extremification”. The key feature of the programme is the use of forced or compulsory labour in or around internment camps housing some 1.8 million Uyghur and other Turkic and/or Muslim peoples in the region, as well as in prisons and workplaces across the Uyghur Autonomous Region and the country. The Committee notes the information provided by the Government in response to these allegations, which has arrived too late for the Committee’s examination. The Committee will examine these matters next year along with the Government’s report in reply to its previous direct request, which is due in 2021.