Uzbekistan forced labour linked to World Bank projects, advocates say
New study alleges child- and forced-labour practices are still alive and well in country’s cotton industry
Fall is cotton-picking season in Uzbekistan. Every autumn, as the bolls ripen, the Central Asian government presses approximately one million of its own citizens, mostly civil servants, teachers and students, into the fields as cotton pickers, bringing $1 billion in annual revenue, a quarter of Uzbekistan’s GDP. And that annual harvest has long been mired in controversy for using child and forced labour, though the practice had been declining in recent years, in large part due to pressure from international organizations and boycotts from global garment companies.
However, a new report released this week by Human Rights Watch, in conjunction with the Uzbek-Ger- man Forum, an advocacy group, alleges that both practices are still alive and well — and are taking place in areas that are home to World Bank agriculture projects.
Based on hundreds of interviews conducted from 2015 to 2017, leaked government documents, and statements by government officials, the report documents what it says is the widespread use of forced labour — and less prevalent instances of child labour — in the 2016 cotton harvest. Both Human Rights Watch and the Uzbek-German Forum added in the 114-page report that the World Bank’s continued support for projects on land where such violations take place creates the image that the Uzbek government “is working to end forced labour in good faith, when it is not.” Both called on the World Bank to pressure the Uzbek government.
“The World Bank has significant responsibility, but also significant leverage. It needs to exercise both,” Jessica Evans, senior researcher on international financial institutions at Human Rights Watch and one of the report’s authors, told Foreign Policy.
The World Bank has been a major investor in Uzbekistan’s agriculture sector and has faced accusations in the past that projects that it funds in the country were linked to forced and child labour. In 2013, after complaints about forced labour, the World Bank implemented new measures for its projects to better comply with national and international laws, including implementing third-party monitoring. Moreover, the World Bank can suspend loans to the Uzbek government if there is credible evidence of systematic forced and child labour on projects that it funds.
AWorld Bank spokesperson told FP in a statement that the organization “does not condone forced labour in any form” and pointed to a report produced by the International Labor Organization (ILO), a UN agency that provides third-party monitoring of the World Bank’s projects in Uzbekistan, that found “no incidences of child and forced labour were identified with regard to World Bank-supported agriculture, water, and education projects.”