"A Peek Behind the World Bank’s Mask", 1 August 2017

On June 27 we released a joint report documenting forced and child labor linked to the World Bank’s agriculture projects in Uzbekistan. We hoped it would cause bank officials to rethink their approach. But then the bank’s country team inadvertently left an internal conversation on our voicemail...It revealed their ultimate goal: to protect the bank from external pressure and get new agriculture projects through their executive board “unscathed,” as one of the voices on the phone said...On June 30 the bank’s executive board approved yet another loan benefiting Uzbekistan’s cotton sector, which is at the center of the government’s forced labor system.