Anti-slavery campaigners have called on two leading high street retailers to end the sale of clothes made with child labour.
The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) and Anti-Slavery International have accused H&M and Zara of using cotton suppliers in Bangladesh which obtain many of their raw materials from Uzbekistan, where children as young as 10 are forced to work in the fields.
They are calling on retailers to ban Uzbek cotton and implement "track and trace" systems to make sure the source of the material can be vouched for.
Anti-Slavery supply chain co-ordinator Joanna Ewart-James said: "It is unacceptable that the cotton used to make these products could be picked by forced child labour."
EJF campaign director Juliette Williams said: "Despite the Uzbekistan government signing up last year to international conventions on child labour, it is clear that children are still being forced into the fields to pick cotton that is ending up on the high street.
"It is time the EU reconsidered its trading position with Uzbekistan."
The Uzbek government outlawed forced child labour last year after Western retailers threatened to boycott the country's cotton industry.
But the campaign groups have obtained images of children picking cotton taken secretly during this year's harvest.
Anti-Slavery says every year the Uzbek government closes schools and forces more than 200,000 children, some as young as 10 years old, into the cotton fields for the three-month harvest, which ended earlier this month.
An H&M spokeswoman said: "H&M does not accept forced labour or child labour. We are very concerned about the reports about forced child labour in Uzbekistan, and consequently we seek to avoid Uzbek cotton."
She said the 10 H&M suppliers which source their own raw cotton had confirmed they did not buy cotton from Uzbekistan.
But she said the company "cannot exclude the possibility" that certain manufacturers that supply fabric to some of H&M's garment suppliers were obtaining cotton from the country.
An Inditex spokesman said the company has promoted the Ethical Trading Initiative to encourage the Uzbekistan government to take measures to ensure the total eradication of child labour in the cotton sector.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/84904
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