A new study, “Invisible to the World: The Dynamics of Forced Child Labour in the Cotton Sector of Uzbekistan”, highlights the scale and severity of [the country’s annual cotton harvest, which depends on the forced labour of some 2.7 million children]...Uzbekistan represents a rare instance of state-sanctioned mass mobilization of children’s labour. The principal beneficiaries are not households or primary producers but state-controlled trading companies higher up the value chain...Many major clothing producers and retailers in Europe and the US have pledged to stop using Uzbek cotton in their products.