"Forced labour in Uzbek cotton fields linked to World Bank funds: rights groups", 27 June 2017

Children and adults were forced to pick cotton in at least one project funded by the World Bank in Uzbekistan, where the cotton industry has been tainted by widespread forced labour, rights groups said...The Uzbek government forced students, teachers and doctors to plant cotton and harvest it from 2015 to 2017, stopping children from receiving a full education, Human Rights Watch and the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights said in a report...Those who refused to work on cotton fields risked being fired, expelled from school or having their welfare payments slashed...In one irrigation project funded by the World Bank spanning an area where the government had agreed to prohibit forced and child labour, researchers found children as young as 13 working in fields as well as adults who had been coerced into working. The World Bank provided almost $700 million in loans to the Uzbek government for agriculture and water projects in 2015 and 2016.