UN Experts Raise Alarm on China’s Forced Labour Targeting Uyghurs and Tibetans

UN experts warn China’s forced labour targets Uyghurs and Tibetans as “Xinjiang”’s five-year plan (2021–2025) projects 13.75 million labour transfers—numbers now reportedly even higher.

By Abliz Iminniyaz

Geneva, January 22, 2026 – United Nations human rights experts have raised serious concerns about ongoing forced labour affecting Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Tibetan communities in the Uyghur homeland, officially known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The experts warned that these practices, which have persisted for years, may amount to crimes against humanity, including forcible transfer and enslavement.

In a statement released today by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), independent experts said that China’s government-run “poverty alleviation through labour transfer” programs appear to coerce ethnic minorities into work. Many participants—mainly Uyghurs and other Turkic groups—are reportedly sent to jobs both within the Uyghur homeland and across other provinces under strict surveillance, with little freedom to refuse, and face threats of punishment or arbitrary detention if they resist.

Official planning documents show that Xinjiang’s five-year plan (2021–2025) aimed for 13.75 million labour transfers. Observers say the actual numbers have far exceeded these projections, reaching unprecedented levels.

Adrian Zenz, a leading expert on human rights and forced labour, senior fellow and Director of China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and author of numerous authoritative articles on the subject, commented on X following the UN statement: said”Issued by four UN Special Rapporteurs and the Working Group on Business and Human Rights, the statement highlights alarming recent increases in coercive labor volumes in both regions and underscores the resulting contamination of global supply chains. Having contributed to the empirical and conceptual data underpinning this assessment, I can attest to the rigor and accuracy of these findings. This represents a significant precedent—apparently the first time UN Special Procedures have explicitly articulated the causal mechanism between “land grabbing” (land transfers) and the displacement of targeted rural populations into forced wage labor. The alarming increase in land transfers and their connection to forced labor was recently documented in our recent report on forced labor in Xinjiang’s agricultural production.”

Tibetans are also affected by similar programs. The government’s Training and Labour Transfer Action Plan calls for “systematic training and transfer” of rural workers, often through military-style vocational programs. In 2024 alone, an estimated 650,000 Tibetans were affected. Other policies, such as “whole-village relocation,” have uprooted communities using repeated home visits, subtle threats, restrictions on criticism, and the withholding of essential services to force compliance.

According to official data, from 2000 to 2025, around 3.36 million Tibetans were affected by forced settlement programs, with nearly 930,000 relocated through village-wide or household-specific initiatives.

The UN experts emphasized that these labour and relocation programs are not just about economic development. They are part of broader policies that undermine the cultural identities of Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other minority groups. By uprooting traditional livelihoods and relocating people to controlled work environments, these programs disrupt local languages, community structures, cultural practices, and religious life—causing lasting and irreparable harm.

Experts also warned that goods produced under forced labour may enter global supply chains, often via third countries, highlighting potential gaps in trade restrictions and corporate due diligence efforts.

The UN experts urged companies and investors working with Chinese suppliers to strictly follow human rights due diligence standards under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, ensuring their operations and supply chains are free from forced labour. They also renewed calls for China to allow independent UN human rights mechanisms unrestricted access to affected regions.

The U.S. has passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, implementing measures to block products made with potential forced labour from entering American markets.

China’s government has not responded to the UN warning yet, but in the past, it denied any forced labour accusations and claimed that people in Xinjiang are happy—a claim that has been proven false.

Abliz Iminniyaz is a volunteer writer for Uyghur Times.