4 Image: Human rights defender Elena Urlaeva(in the middle in white) with farmers from Pop district, 2022 Source: Elena Urlaeva 2.3.4 Case study four: Pop district The modernisation of agriculture in Uzbekistan, which has been implemented with significant financing from international financial institutions (IFIs), including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank, has been systematically accompanied by state-initiated involuntary terminations of long-term land leases over farmland across the country.141 In January 2019, the authorities announced the third redistribution of farmland in the past ten years.142 According to the state authorities, the restructuring was needed in order to optimise the use of land allocated for cotton and grain cultivation and to redistribute the land to more efficient farmers and so-called clusters. This occurred in parallel with a wider policy of agricultural ‘clusterisation’, which involves large acreages of farming production being entrusted to vertically integrated companies for the production, processing and manufacture of cotton products. These companies, known as clusters, are responsible also for value-added processing of the raw materials, a policy that has been designed to reduce the role of state enterprises in agro-industry in Uzbekistan. Cluster operators will either hold the land directly through lease or will operate the cluster through contractual relationships with farmers with leasehold rights to the land. Previous research on the cotton clusterisation process has raised concerns over the commercial record of some of the largest cluster operators, some of whom have been substantively linked to serious improper corporate conduct.143 A False Sense of Legality 49