The FIFA World Cup is one of the most prestigious sporting events in the world, watched by millions from all corners of the globe. The chance to host is highly sought after by nations for the potential to boost their local economies and promote their global image. It is an institution where sports are inextricably linked with the private interests of corporations while the interest of the marginal populations completely ignored.
In the case of Qatar, the nation set to host the 2022 World Cup, the price of prestige is the rights and even the lives of the hundreds of migrant workers who work under force as part of multi-billion dollar construction projects throughout the country in preparation for the games. An investigation taken by the Guardian in September revealed that the migrant Nepalese population in Qatar work under slave-like conditions. The report states that migrant workers comprise more than 90 percent of the workforce in Qatar, currently one the richest countries in the world in terms of GDP, while the Nepalese form the largest migrant worker group within the country.
The Nepalese Embassy in Doha told the investigators that 44 Nepalese migrant labourers have died between June 4 and Aug. 8 of this year. More than half died from heart attacks, heart failure or workplace accidents. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that thousands of Nepalese face daily abuses and exploitation that can be defined as modern slavery according to ILO standards. Workers report being made to work in up to 13 hours at a time in desert conditions with temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius, all with little to no rest, water or pay.
“The evidence uncovered by the Guardian is clear proof of the use of systematic forced labour in Qatar,” said Aidan McQuade, director of Anti-Slavery International to the Guardian. “In fact, these working conditions and the astonishing number of deaths of vulnerable workers go beyond forced labour to the slavery of old where human beings were treated as objects.”
Moreover, it is difficult for the majority of the migrants to pull away from this system – so much that Maya Kumari Sharma, the Nepalese Ambassador to Qatar, told the BBC that the country was like an “open jail.” Almost all of the workers were victim to exploitative schemes of recruitment brokers and labour contractors in their home countries, who promise wages greater than what they could earn back home. They end up owing massive debts to these contractors to pay for their jobs.
Workers are also often kept deliberately uninformed of the restrictive kafala system that governs them the moment they step into Qatar. According to the Human Rights Watch, kafala (sponsorship) ties a migrant worker’s legal resident status to his or her employer, or “sponsor.” Migrant workers cannot change jobs without their sponsor’s consent except in exceptional cases and with permission from the Ministry of Interior. If a worker leaves his or her employer, even if fleeing abuse, the employer can report the worker for “absconding,” leading to detention and deportation.
In order to legally leave Qatar, migrants must obtain an exit visa from their sponsor, and many workers claim that sponsors denied them these visas. Workers are also forbidden to form unions. In a country where the absolute monarchy has a final say in legal matters, migrant workers have little chance at justice.
In a statement to Qatari Minister of Labour in Geneva and officials at the Qatar 2022 supreme committee, Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, predicted that “Without the necessary changes, more workers will die building the World Cup facilities than players will take to the field in the 2022 World Cup.”
However, FIFA officials have no plans to take action to address the on-going problem of slavery. FIFA president Sepp Blatter has paid a visit to the Emir of Qatar to further discuss the matter, but told the Guardian that he has “no direct influence over the situation” and added that “there is plenty more time to resolve the issue until 2022, it is in nine years.” Blatter has not considered threatening Qatar with the loss of hosting the World Cup tournament if the abuse goes on, and no serious action has been taken to ensure that Nepalese workers are not continuing to die under such insufferable work conditions.
Russian news agency RT reported that Qatar plans on spending an estimated $100 billion on infrastructure projects to support the World Cup, including nine state-of-the-art air-conditioned stadiums, $20 billion on new roads, $4 billion for a causeway connecting Qatar to the island nation of Bahrain, $24 billion for a high-speed rail network, and 55,000 hotel rooms to accommodate visiting fans.
Qatar’s case is just one of many that demonstrates how the World Cup can hold marginalized populations at the mercy of corporate interests. Protests have broken out across Brazil this year against the government’s lack of expenditure on health care and education in favour of World Cup preparations. This past summer, Russia passed a new law that will strip thousands of Russian and migrant workers of labour rights and standards as they work on projects for the 2018 World Cup.
Despite these gross human rights violations, both Qatar and FIFA authorities continue to turn a blind eye to the abhorrent working conditions on the ground, ultimately in the name of sports entertainment. What the public needs to do is demand that corporate sports entertainment not come at the cost of human rights, or, as in the case of the on-going slavery in Qatar, at the cost of human lives.
