World Bank Group Failing at Remedies for Project Abuses
Independent Review Recommends Funding to Address Harms
An external review of the World Bank Group's private funding institutions found that social and environmental abuses caused by their development projects went largely unaddressed, leaving victims without remedies. The review focused on the…
Forced Labor Persists in Uzbekistan's Cotton Fields
Report Highlights Shortcomings in Recruitment Practices and Accountability
Uzbekistan has made important strides in reducing the use of forced labor in its cotton sector but has yet to eliminate it completely, according to new research released this week. Uzbek Forum, an international nongovernmental organization,…
Forced Labor Lives on in Uzbekistan's Cotton Fields
Reforms Need to Target the Underlying Soviet-Era System Encouraging Forced Labor
Despite a slew of steps taken to curb the practice, forced labor in Uzbekistan's cotton fields remains widespread, according to a recently released report. The Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights (UGF), which has been monitoring…
New Research Shows Forced Labor Still Rampant in Uzbekistan
World Bank President Jim Kim Should Press to Eliminate Labor Abuses
Despite recent reforms, systematic forced labor was still rampant in 2017 in Uzbekistan's cotton sector, new research shows. A report by the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights (UGF), a German-based nongovernmental…
World Bank Presses Uzbekistan to End Forced Labor
Some Students, Teachers, Medical Workers Released
The recent release of 200,000 university students and some teachers and medical workers from forced labor picking cotton in Uzbekistan came shortly after World Bank President Jim Yong Kim's first meeting with the country's new president, Shavkat…
Dispatches: Death at Uzbekistan's Cotton Harvest
There is an empty seat in a first-grade classroom in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, where 6-year-old Amirbek Rakhmatov should be sitting. He died on September 15, according to Uzbek provincial officials, suffocating under a load of cotton as he slept in a trailer…
EBRD Meeting in Tashkent Turns into Scrutiny of Host Government's Abysmal Rights Record
Uzbekistan has one of the poorest human rights records of any former Soviet republic. So human rights groups in Uzbekistan and around the world were surprized when a major financial institution chose Tashkent as the site of its annual meeting. Because the…
Uzbekistan: Concern About EBRD Decision On Tashkent
In May 2002, Human Rights Watch joined fifty-three other non-governmental organizations in writing to EBRD President Jean Lemierre to express concern about the detrimental impact of holding the meeting in Tashkent on respect for human rights in Uzbekistan…
Widespread Labor Abuse on Banana Plantations in Ecuador
WIDESPREAD LABOR ABUSE ON BANANA PLANTATIONS IN ECUADOR Ecuadorian children as young as eight work on banana plantations in hazardous conditions, while adult workers fear being fired if they try to exercise their right to organize, Human Rights Watch…