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	Forced and Child Labor Linked to World Bank Group Investments in Uzbekistan by Human Rights Watch   Cotton is mandatory for everyone. The government gave the orders to pick and you will not go against those orders…. If I refuse, they will fire me…. We would lose the bread we eat. − Uzbek schoolteacher, October 2015, Turtkul, Karakalpakstan.   For several weeks in the fall of 2015, government officials forced Firuza, a 47-year-old grandmother, to harvest cotton in Turtkul, a district in Uzbekistan’s most western region, the autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan. The local neighborhood council, the mahalla committee, had threatened to withhold child welfare benefits for her grandson if she did not go to the fields to harvest cotton. These same officials forced another woman, Gulnora, to harvest cotton for the same length of time.   Although Gulnora worked, the government refused to pay her child welfare benefits, promising to consider reinstating them if she worked in the fields the next spring. The Uzbek government forces enormous numbers of people to harvest cotton every year through this kind of coercion.   The government’s abusive practices are not confined to adults. During the 2016 harvest the government forced young children to work in the cotton fields. In Ellikkala, a district neighboring Turtkul, officials from at least two schools ordered 13 and 14-year-old children to pick cotton after school. The Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights saw children working in one of the cotton fields, and a teacher ordering the children to hide.   The World Bank has funded an irrigation project in these districts on the condition that the Uzbek government comply with laws prohibiting forced and child labor. Despite this agreement, the Uzbek government has continued to force people, including children, to work within the project area.   Withholding child benefits and other welfare payments is just one of the penalties the government has used to force people to work. The government has threatened to fire people, especially public sector employees who are among the lowest paid in the country. Students who refused to work faced the threat of expulsion, academic penalties, and other consequences.   People living in poverty are particularly susceptible to forced labor, as they are unable to risk losing their jobs or welfare benefits by refusing to work and cannot afford to pay people to work in their place.   Based on interviews with victims of forced labor in September to November 2015, April to June and September to November 2016, and early 2017, leaked government documents, and statements by government officials, this report details how the Uzbek government forced students, teachers, medical workers, other government employees, and private-sector employees to harvest cotton in 2015 and 2016, as well as prepare the cotton fields in the spring of 2016.   The report documents forced adult and child labor in one World Bank project area and demonstrates that it is highly likely that the Bank’s other agriculture projects in Uzbekistan are linked to ongoing forced labor in light of the systemic nature of the abuses. The report also finds that there is a significant risk of child labor in other Bank agricultural projects in the country.   Uzbekistan is the fifth largest cotton producer in the world. It exports about 60 percent of its raw cotton to China, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Iran. Uzbekistan’s cotton industry generates over US$1 billion in revenue, or about a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), from one million tons of cotton fiber annually. These funds go into an opaque extra-budgetary account, the Selkhozfond, housed in the Ministry of Finance, that escapes public scrutiny and is controlled by high-level officials.   Campaigns by a number of groups against forced and child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton sector have resulted in boycotts of Uzbek cotton. For example, 274 companies have pledged not to knowingly source cotton from Uzbekistan because of forced and child labor in the sector. Despite this, the World Bank remains active in the country’s agriculture sector providing a total of $518.75 million in loans to the government for projects in this sector in 2015 and 2016..   * Access the full report via the link below. Visit the related web page
	Least Developed Countries report finds poverty increasing in 48 most vulnerable countries by ISSD, UN Conference on Trade and Development   The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released its 2016 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) report, which finds that global poverty is increasingly concentrated in the world’s 48 most vulnerable countries. The report urges increased global support to ensure that the LDCs are not left behind in efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).   ‘The LDCs Report 2016: The Path to Graduation and Beyond: Making the Most of the Process’ illustrates how many LDCs are “stuck in a poverty trap,” in which poverty leads to lack of education, poor health and nutrition, and undermines productivity and investment, ultimately hindering efforts to achieve sustainable development.   According to the UN, the proportion of the global poor in LDCs has more than doubled since 1990, with over 40% of the world’s poor found in these countries. Similarly, the proportion of people without access to water has doubled to over 43% in LDCs, and the proportion of people without access to electricity has increased by nearly 53% in LDCs. In six LDCs, rates of extreme poverty are between 70% and 80%.   According to the report, four countries have graduated from the LDC category since it was established 45 years ago: Botswana, Cabo Verde, Maldives and Samoa. To graduate from the LDC category, countries must meet a set of economic and social criteria. In 2011, the international community set a goal that half of all LDCs, or 21 countries, will satisfy graduation criteria by 2020. Equatorial Guinea, Vanuatu and Angola are scheduled to graduate in 2017, 2020 and 2021, respectively.   To achieve long-term development, the report recommends that LDCs implement structural changes to increase the productivity of their economies and achieve “graduation with momentum” through, inter alia: developing rural non-farm activities while also upgrading agriculture; promoting productive policies and activities that contribute to development; building capacities in science, technology and innovation (STI); strengthening tax systems, addressing financial inclusion and improving financial systems; and addressing gender equality across all policy areas.   The report calls on donors to meet official development assistance (ODA) commitments and to make aid more predictable, stable and aligned with national development strategies. It also calls for: faster progress towards 100% duty-free and quota-free access for LDC exports to developed country markets; timely operationalization of a technology bank for LDCs in 2017 and improved monitoring of technology transfers; and progress on special and differentiated treatment for LDCs in the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) negotiations.   UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi said LDCs are “the countries where the global battle for poverty eradication will be won or lost,” underscoring the need for global support for LDCs to meet the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’s commitment to “leave no one behind.” On graduation from LDC status, Kituyi emphasized that “how a country graduates is just as important as when it graduates,” explaining that graduation is only the “first milestone in the marathon of sustainable long-term development.”   http://sdg.iisd.org/news/unctad-report-highlights-increasing-poverty-in-ldcs/ Visit the related web page
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