The World Bank is funding half a billion dollars in agricultural projects linked to forced and child labour in Uzbekistan, Human Rights Watch and the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights said in a report released today. Under the loan agreements, the Uzbek Govt. is required to comply with laws prohibiting forced and child labour, and the World Bank can suspend the loans if there is credible evidence of violations. The 115-page report, “‘We Can’t Refuse to Pick Cotton’: Forced and Child Labour Linked to World Bank Group Investments in Uzbekistan” details how the Uzbek Govt. forced students, teachers, medical workers, other govt. employees, private-sector employees, and sometimes children to harvest cotton in 2015 and 2016, as well as to weed the fields and plant cotton in the spring of 2016... The report is based on 257 detailed interviews and about 700 brief conversations with victims of forced and child labour, farmers, and key actors in the forced labour system, leaked govt. documents, and statements by govt. officials... A total of 274 companies have pledged not to source cotton from Uzbekistan knowingly because of forced and child labour in the sector... [Human Rights Watch and the Uzbek-German Forum urge] [t]he World Bank and the IFC [to] suspend agriculture and irrigation financing to Uzbekistan until it is not tainted by forced and child labour.