World Cup 2022: Why Qatar’s human rights record is still cause for concern

Four years before it hosts the 2022 World Cup, Qatar has been attacked for its continued exploitation of migrant workers building facilities for the tournament and “inadequate” reforms, despite claiming to have drastically improved conditions in the country.

“Promised reforms have been slow in coming and we remain concerned that 2022 will arrive and Qatar’s hundreds of thousands of foreign workers will still be facing exploitation and poor working and living conditions,” Allan Hogarth, Amnesty UK’s head of advocacy and programmes, told i.

Research conducted by the International Trade Union Confederation indicates that over 1,200 migrant workers have died while working on projects connected with the 2022 World Cup.

List of transgressions

“If Qatar ever saw the World Cup as a way of ‘sportswashing’ the country’s tarnished human rights, this has backfired,” Hogarth said. “The whole world is now aware of Qatar’s dreadful record on labour rights.”

Qatar has claimed to have improved conditions for workers recently and allowed foreign workers to leave the country without their employers’ permission from September. But such reforms are widely seen as both not going far enough and not being enforced.

Investigations have found that rules protecting labourers from working during the hottest hours of the day have often not been enforced, while employers still seize the passports of their staff, thereby preventing them from leaving.

In August a Nepalese worker was killed after falling while building the al-Wakrah stadium, one of those which will be used in the World Cup.

Amnesty International recently found that an engineering company had left workers unpaid for months. Some Nepali workers interviewed had taken their children out of school, or sold land, to pay the debts they incurred for their migration to Qatar.

‘Inadequate reforms’

“The reforms that have been made are important – but inadequate – because the vast majority of construction is outside stadiums,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch. “In Qatar, the main problems are always implementation, and monitoring.”

The exact format of the 2022 World Cup must be confirmed by the end of FIFA’s council meeting in Miami in March, i understands. FIFA President Gianni Infantino has said that he supports exploring whether the 2022 competition can be expanded to 48 teams – the same format that will be used in the 2026 edition and subsequently. As hosts, Qatar would need to agree to this move.

Last month Infantino said that Qatar could look at “sharing some matches with some other countries” if the tournament was expanded to 48 teams. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been suggested as potential co-hosts, but both countries face huge human rights questions, and are currently implementing a blockade on Qatar.