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Uzbekistan : World Bank approves cotton project in Uzbekistan despite concerns
Publish Date : 06-Oct-2017
In spite of evidence documented by Human Rights Watch (HRW) of forced labour in the Uzbek cotton industry, the World Bank has passed yet another project that will benefit the sector, approving a $145 million irrigation project.
According to a report published in late June by HRW and the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights, the Uzbek government forced students, teachers, medical workers, other government employees, and private-sector employees to harvest cotton in 2015 and 2016, as well as prepare the cotton fields in the spring of 2016.
Concerns have been repeatedly raised over forced labour in Bank-funded projects in the country in recent years.
But, HRW's new report said, Despite [these concerns], the World Bank remains active in the countrys agriculture sector providing a total of $518.75 million in loans to the government for projects in this sector in 2015 and 2016. Following the release of HRWs report, staff from the Banks Uzbek country team unintentionally left a voicemail with Jessica Evans of HRW, which included an internal discussion of the their response to the report. As Evans noted in a subsequent blog, The strategic story line to which the country team agreed on the call was to highlight to the board the banks role in reducing child labor in cotton, which according to them wouldnt have happened without the World Bank being involved, and dismiss our research as old news. But our research found that the Uzbek government is still forcing kids as young as 10 to work in 4 regions, including in a World Bank project area and one of the regions of the new project.
