World Bank-backed child labour in Uzbek agriculture

The Bank’s support of agriculture in Uzbekistan has landed it in hot water suggesting that it does not take seriously the social implications of such lending. Ezgulik, an Uzbek NGO, issued a report in December 2010 documenting severe flaws in the Bank's assessments in providing the second phase of a $67.9 million loan to the Uzbek government. The loan, provided through IDA, the Bank’s low-income country arm, was a renewal of funding for the agriculture sector for 2010-2015.

The report documents a number of failures in the Bank’s support, ranging from assumptions made about reforms underway in the agricultural sector to overestimates of pay being $300 per month for adult labourers rather than the $100 reported by Ezgulik. According to Ezgulik, most disturbing is the Bank’s conclusion that their social assessment did not reveal extensive use of child labour, contrary to reports by other institutions including UNICEF. Child labour in the Uzbek cotton fields has been widely documented by national and international NGOs in recent years. “[S]chool kids are working in cotton fields in hazardous conditions ... while the agro-project managers of the World Bank keep reporting success stories about the situation in the farming sector of Uzbekistan,” concludes Ezgulik.

NGO Anti-Slavery International, whose European-wide campaign Cotton Crimes seeks to end slavery in the cotton sector has also raised concern about the Bank's support of Uzbekistan. "Uzbekistan's authorities' use of coercion to force adults and children into the cotton fields during the harvest has been well-documented, including by SOAS in their recent report 'What has changed?'," says Joanna Ewart-James. "It is therefore imperative that the World Bank has effective screening policies in place to ensure that funds for rural development do not support the ongoing practice of state-sponsored forced labour."

This article was first published by the Bretton Woods Project

European Council keen to expand trade in textiles with Uzbekistan

The Council of the European Union has announced that it has agreed changes to the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with Uzbekistan to extend the provisions of the PCA to the trade in textiles. This is of concern to the campaign as the proposed changes contradicts a strong and clear message to Uzbekistan that the priority must be to end the systematic use of forced child labour during the annual cotton harvest. However these changes have to be approved by the European Parliament and so this is an opportunity to call on the Parliament to block this process and at the very least, ensure that it is conditional on Uzbekistan ending this practice.

The Association for Human Rights in Central Asia has begun a petition calling for this decision to be reconsidered and for human rights concerns to be taken into account. The petition can be read and signed here. 

Petition progress

Thanks for signing the petition, we now have over 1,000 signatories and change.org, a website which aims to mobilise people to take action to support campaigns globally has also recently posted our petition on its site. We need more signatures to show the European Parliament that this is an issue of concern so please ask your friends to sign on too!