Qatar World Cup: ‘A high price in lives and abuse’
Picture credit: History Of Soccer
The Accidental Diplomat, a column by Paul Knott
‘Fans can support their teams while also backing calls to compensate bereaved families’
I was quite happy when Qatar was chosen as the venue for the 2022 World Cup. The Middle East is the one football-loving part of the world that has never held the tournament before and taking it somewhere new is more interesting than recycling it around countries who have already hosted it.
Perhaps less wholesomely, I was also pleased that the choice of host upset the handful of clubs who dominate the Premier and Champions Leagues. They are annoyed about the World Cup being moved to November to avoid the Arabian Gulf’s summer heat, forcing them to pause their season. In my view, any challenge to the arrogant sense of entitlement and greed of the people who own and run those clubs is to be welcomed. Prioritising the World Cup and national teams is one way of asserting that football belongs to everyone and is not their personal plaything.
I wasn’t even that exercised by the strong whiff of corruption in the bidding process either. Legal cases involving the three previous hosts, Russia, Brazil and Germany, suggest vote-buying is nothing new in the corridors of FIFA, world football’s governing body. Such corruption should be stamped out but, equally, it is hard to claim that Qatar did anything exceptional in this regard.
Indeed, the World Cup has a grim history of being awarded to far worse places. The 1934 tournament was held in Mussolini’s fascist Italy, which “Il Duce” exploited to promote his murderous ideology in the run up to World War II. Argentina hosted it in 1978, with the leaders of its military junta present in the packed stadiums, at a time when their horrific regime was torturing thousands of Argentinian citizens and throwing their battered bodies out of planes into the River Plate. Most recently, the last World Cup in Russia in 2018 gave Vladimir Putin a propaganda platform to portray his country in a positive light, rather than as the viciously aggressive dictatorship it has since proven itself to be.
But many previous wrongs do not make a right. As the years have gone by since the World Cup was awarded to Qatar and the big kick-off date approaches, my misgivings, like those of many other fans, about the tournament taking place there have grown. The main reason is Qatar’s grim record of worker abuse.
In common with its fellow small, oil and gas rich Gulf state neighbours, such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Qatar is an undemocratic, absolute monarchy. Whatever limited rights and freedoms that exist there are granted at the behest of the ruling family. Due to its small population, the majority of Qatar’s residents (an estimated 1.7 million out of a total of 2.8 million) are foreign workers. Most come from poorer countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Many are employed as maids and cleaners or in the hospitality industry and construction jobs. The number of building workers has increased over the past decade to carry out Qatar’s massive programme of expanding its transport, hotel, and stadium infrastructure in preparation for the World Cup.
QATAR: Oil and gas rich, and an undemocratic absolute monarchy. Picture by Masarath Alkhaili
From my own observation when living in the Gulf region for a few years, such workers are commonly treated with callous disregard and dismissed as lesser beings who should “put up or shut up, because there are plenty more where you come from”. Frequently, their wages are too low to enable them to rent accommodation on the open market. Instead, they are housed in grim, employer-controlled camps shared with hundreds of others and with scarce sanitation facilities. They have few rights in relation to their employers, who can prevent them from moving jobs or arrange for them to be instantly deported for any reason. To enforce their absolute control, employers sometimes confiscate their workers’ passports and withhold their wages. Protection against physical abuse and assault of all kinds is minimal.
Worst of all, building site safety standards are often atrocious, compounded by long working hours in dangerously hot conditions. The United Nations’ International Labour Organisation (ILO) recorded 50 deaths, over 500 serious injuries and 37,600 lesser ones suffered by workers on World Cup projects in Qatar in 2021 alone. Given that confirmed cases are hard to verify, these figures are likely to be underestimates.
Last year is also likely to have been the least bad year for building site deaths and injuries during the decade Qatar has been preparing for the World Cup because the spotlight focused the hosts has belatedly prompted some improvements. The Qatari authorities have now instituted a minimum wage and taken steps to allow workers to move jobs when they are being mistreated. The Secretary-General of Qatar 2022, Hassan al-Thawadi, claims the country’s upgraded site safety standards “are now the benchmark for the region…and equal to those in Europe or North America”.
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More progress is still needed though. Just a few weeks ago, Equidem, a workers’ rights organisation, reported that one of the biggest World Cup project construction companies had withheld wages from workers for seven months and had them deported when they protested.
Human rights organisations and, to their credit, some national football associations, are working together to maintain the pressure. The Swiss FA, for example, worked with Amnesty International and UNIA, Switzerland’s biggest trade union, to ensure the training facilities and hotel its team will use in Qatar were built and operated in accordance with international standards. The English FA has been less proactive and some dubious practices at its hotel have been reported.
Perhaps the most prominent campaign is the #PayUpFIFA initiative led by Human Rights Watch and a coalition of other organisations. They are lobbying FIFA to create a compensation fund for the mostly poor families of workers killed or injured in building World Cup facilities. Their demand is for a fund that at least matches the $440 million in prize money available at the tournament. This seems a modest percentage of the $6 billion revenues FIFA expects to rake in from this year’s World Cup.
Like many hopelessly addicted football fans, I will still watch the World Cup, but with an undercurrent of unease about the unjustifiable suffering of many of the workers who made it possible. It is good, at least, that hosting the tournament has prompted Qatar to take some steps to tackle the long-standing problem of worker abuse in the Gulf. But more needs to be done and nothing will bring back those who have already lost their lives. The least those of us cheering on our teams this November can do is to also support the campaigns for compensation for their families.