Implementing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act: A Challenge Worth the Effort

January 5, 2023

Red dates, also known as jujubes, are small, pitted fruits popular throughout Asia. China produces 40% of the world’s supply, and the Uyghur Human Rights Project issued a report estimating that 50% of China’s jujubes originate in the XUAR. The report said jujubes produced in XUAR continued to turn up on U.S. supermarket shelves even after UFLPA implementation.

The XUAR was financially benefiting from the circumvention of the UFLPA on the sales of jujubes, according to the Uyghur Human Rights Project report, despite CBP’s enforcement efforts. When international trade analysts Diana Sassmann and Erika Ribeiro of CBP Office of Trade’s New York National Threat Analysis Center saw the Uyghur Human Rights Project report, they immediately sprang into action, and CBP initiated a dynamic and collaborative approach to ensure the correct actions were taken.

This case illustrates why reports from civil society, non-governmental organizations and industry play a major role in CBP’s work to keep goods made with forced labor out of the U.S. Sassmann and Ribeiro, armed with the information provided in the Uyghur Human Rights Project report and intelligence gleaned from other sources, identified several inbound shipments that they suspected contained jujubes originating in the XUAR – including one at the nearby Port of Newark, New Jersey, that arrived that very day.

Read the full article: https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/implementing-uyghur-forced-labor-prevention-act?