Human Rights Groups Condemn State Department Decision to Honor Intel and Gap, Inc., Companies Listed on Jewish World Watch Uyghur Forced Labor Database

Washington, D.C. – Today, Secretary of State Antony Blinken recognized two companies with the State Department’s prestigious Award for Corporate Excellence (ACE) with well-known and extensively-documented ties to Uyghur forced labor. Human rights groups, including Jewish World Watch and Uyghur Human Rights Project, condemn the decision. Nominated by the U.S. missions in Costa Rica and India, the companies, Intel and Gap, Inc., respectively, have facilities in Xinjiang, China, the region where the Department’s own genocide determination was focused.

Jewish World Watch’s Uyghur Forced Labor Database ties Intel to five facilities under scrutiny for forced labor. Intel’s presence in Xinjiang also includes ongoing investment and partnerships that produce the processors central to the Chinese Communist Party’s growing surveillance state. Additionally, according to the Database, Gap, Inc., has dozens of implicated suppliers in its chain. More than 20 percent of the world’s cotton comes from China, with the Xinjiang region producing 85 percent of exported cotton.

“The U.S. Department of State’s decision to honor companies with expansive ties to Xinjiang weakens the hard-fought progress that has been made toward Uyghur human rights,” said Serena Oberstein, Jewish World Watch Executive Director. “Our leaders must consider the consequences and message this sends to businesses perpetrating forced labor abuses and the People’s Republic of China.”

With these known implications, Jewish World Watch and the Uyghur Human Rights Project are calling on Secretary Blinken to rescind Friday’s awards to Intel and Gap, Inc.

“When the U.S. State Department honors companies for being leaders in corporate responsibility in one country, they should at least do minimal due diligence to ensure those companies are not complicit in mass atrocities in another country where that company does business,” stated Kelley E. Currie, former Ambassador for the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues. “Information about Intel’s and Gap’s connections to the Uyghur genocide is not new and is publicly available. State should have known and done better.”

With the recent passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and the increased focus on human rights in Xinjiang, it is unconscionable for the U.S. State Department to bestow this annual honor on these two companies.

“The parent companies of two awardees, Intel and GAP, kept up business ties with Chinese companies even when it was clear they were participating in Uyghur forced labor and total government surveillance,” said Omer Kanat, Uyghur Human Rights Project Executive Director. “How can they be good corporate citizens?”

Should the Department proceed with the awards, the decision risks the progress of Uyghur justice and signals to the Chinese Communist Party that ending Uyghur slave labor is not a top priority for the United States.

Attachment: Jewish World Watch Uyghur Forced Labor Documentation – Intel & Gap (PDF).

###