United Nations human rights experts have issued an unusually blunt and damning assessment of alleged forced labour affecting Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Tibetans across China, telling Beijing that the practices could amount to forcible transfer or enslavement crimes against humanity under international law.
In a statement released 22 January 2026, independent UN Special Rapporteurs said evidence points to a systemic, State-imposed labour regime targeting ethnic minorities, not only in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region but “across multiple provinces.” The experts described a pattern of coercion so pervasive that workers face systematic monitoring, surveillance, threats of punishment and virtually no freedom to refuse or leave assigned work.
At the centre of the allegations is Beijing’s “poverty alleviation through labour transfer” programme, a government-mandated scheme under which millions of minorities are reportedly placed into jobs both inside Xinjiang and in distant regions. Xinjiang’s official five-year plan (2021–2025) projected 13.75 million labour transfers, a figure observers say has already been exceeded, underscoring the programme’s massive scale.
UN experts also highlighted parallel coercive schemes affecting Tibetans. Under policies such as the Training and Labour Transfer Action Plan, rural Tibetans are mobilised into regimented work programmes that disrupt traditional livelihoods. The experts estimated nearly 650,000 Tibetans were subjected to labour transfers in 2024 alone, and said an additional 3.36 million Tibetans have been affected by relocation efforts requiring nomadic communities to rebuild homes and abandon ancestral ways of life between 2000 and 2025.
“These policies justify coercive methods such as military-style vocational training,” the experts said, adding that forced labour and relocation programmes are explicitly used to reshape the cultural identities of Uyghurs, Tibetans and others “under the guise of poverty alleviation.” They warned that such practices cause irreversible harm to language, religion, cultural traditions and community cohesion.
The UN analysts expressed severe concern that products made under these conditions are entering global supply chains, often indirectly through third countries, posing urgent questions for companies and investors about human rights due diligence and compliance with international trade and human rights norms.
The response from Beijing was predictably hostile. On 23 January 2026, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun dismissed the experts’ concerns as “completely fabricated and groundless,” calling allegations of forced labour politically motivated and accusing the UN experts of bias and of serving “anti-China forces.” China reiterated its claim that its programmes are legitimate efforts to reduce poverty and improve employment.
International civil society and advocacy groups have seized on the UN experts’ statement. The Justice For All Save Uyghur Campaign welcomed the findings and urged governments and corporations to take action, asserting that “when the state uses fear, detention and surveillance to force communities into labour and relocation, that is forced labour by any honest definition” and calling for accountability and unfettered independent access to investigate abuses.
Rights organisations and some Western governments have long raised concerns about abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet, with the US Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act already in force since June 2022 to restrict imports suspected of involving forced labour.
But the blunt language from the UN experts accusing Beijing of patterns that may meet the international legal threshold of crimes against humanity represents a stark escalation in global scrutiny of China’s ethnic minority policies, and adds new momentum to calls for accountability, transparency and systemic reform.
