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Article

22 Dec 2014

Author:
Human Rights Watch

NGOs urge World Bank to investigate whether its projects contribute to forced labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry

"World Bank: Investigate Uzbekistan’s forced labor", 17 December 2014

…The World Bank’s internal watchdog should investigate whether bank projects are contributing to forced labor in Uzbekistan, the Cotton Campaign said today…The World Bank Inspection Panel will decide by December 19 whether existing bank projects benefit the forced labor system under which Uzbek authorities forcibly mobilize more than a million citizens each year to pick cotton. “The World Bank has an obligation to ensure that it does not contribute to forced labor or other human rights violations in its activities,” said Umida Niyazova, Uzbek German Forum for Human Rights director. “The Inspection Panel has the crucial role of holding the bank to account and it can’t do that by giving the bank a free pass for egregious abuses.”…“The World Bank’s proposals fall short in Uzbekistan, where forced labor in the cotton sector is uniquely government-orchestrated and supported by repressing independent groups,” said Jessica Evans, senior international financial institutions researcher at Human Rights Watch…Following international pressure, the government reduced the number of young children sent to harvest cotton in 2014, as it had done in 2013, but increased the use of older children and adults.