School children working in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields
The Bank Information Center submitted a case study to the World Bank’s Safeguards review team regarding the need for Child Impact Assessments as demonstrated by the lack of due diligence around the Rural Enterprise Support Project-II loan to Uzbekistan.
The case study demonstrates that the assessment process for this loan, and its additional round of financing in 2012, was wholly inadequate to understand the risks of contributing to forced child labor through the project. The widespread mobilization of forced child labor by the Uzbek government for the harvesting of cotton each fall has been widely condemned by governments, international bodies, NGOs, and private companies yet the World Bank failed to properly assess and address this issue. The case study thus recommends that the safeguard policies include a requirement that assessments specifically assess the unique risks of the project for children as well as creation of a labor safeguard in line with core ILO standards.
The Need for Child Impact Assessments: A Case Study of the International Development Association Funded Uzbekistan Rural Enterprise Support Project-Phase II