Eighth-form pupils from secondary schools were sent to pick cotton in Jizak Region today, while high-school pupils went to cotton fields two days earlier. Local residents said that schoolchildren had been sent to cotton fields despite government pledges not to force children to pick cotton this year and the country’s ratification of the Convention on the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour...[S]choolchildren…had not been provided [with] basic living conditions…[T]here were no safe sources of drinking water…[T]eachers and elder schoolchildren beat up younger ones for failing to produce good cotton-harvesting results.