Almost 12 years ago, on December 2, 2010, the world of football surprised, some even scandalized, that Qatar had won the right to host the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup. The Gulf Peninsula state, with a population of just over a million, had only 3 stadiums and few other infrastructures and summer temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius.
There were considerations about the option of holding the World Cup in the temperatures of the Qatari desert for enthusiasts and footballers, who, under FIFA rules, are not allowed to play in temperatures above 32 degrees Celsius (89. 6 degrees Fahrenheit) without mandatory breaks to cool off. But Qatar has backtracked from previous considerations with plans to build solar-powered stadiums and air-cooling infrastructure such as a subway, a new airport and a significant number of hotels.
However, sports and state government have paid little or no attention to the plight of the millions of immigrant workers that would be needed to build the vast infrastructure and stadiums for the World Cup in excessive heat. By 2010, low-paid immigrants from Asia and Africa already accounted for more than 90% of the country’s workforce. Soccer’s governing body, FIFA, in its assessment of Qatar’s bid in 2010, declared the “significant human resources” needed for the myriad of infrastructure projects, but did not do so differently. A direct call for Qatar’s labour rights commitments, despite human rights reports detailing abuses against migrant staff.
Winning the auction is not synonymous with disaster. The Qatari government may have simply carried out the mandatory reforms to ensure a dignified life and functioning situation for staff. A 2012 Human Rights Watch report exposed Qatar’s formulaic gaps in coverage of hard work and its abusive kafala (sponsorship) formula that links the legal prestige of staff to that of their employer. The kafala formula allows for serious abuses, adding forced hard labor, such as collecting recruitment fees that trap indebted staff, confiscating their passports, stealing their salaries, and offering unsafe operating situations and overcrowded and unsanitary hard labor camps. Human rights organizations and industry unions have issued similar warnings and recommendations.
The last decade has been a fierce struggle for personnel reforms and ending the kafala system. Under pressure from the International Labour Organization (ILO), Qatar brought key labor ions, including, in 2020, a minimum wage, an end to the requirement of an exit permit for migrants to leave the country, and allowing migrant staff to replace jobs before their contracts end without first obtaining their employer’s consent. They also put into operation the Workers’ Insurance and Support Fund to reimburse the salaries of staff in business failure.
These reforms are crucial. Many staff members were able to send cash home to feed them, pay their children’s school fees and build new homes. such as the 2014 staff welfare criteria and the 2017 universal reimbursement program that reimbursed staff for illegal recruitment fees only implemented for those hired to paint on projects for the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, the government agency of the World Cup.
Neither Qatar nor FIFA had much idea about the immigrants needed for the World Cup, but after 12 years of hard work, Qatar is about to hand over the games. The road has not been easy with three and a half years. forced isolation through their neighbors and the Covid-19 pandemic, but the enduring legacy of Qatar’s World Cup will be whether they can block and leverage those reforms to stop employee abuses. The most important test is whether Qatar and FIFA will try. deaths and other abuses from 2010. La FIFA and Qatar will have to leave migrant staff who returned home humiliated without pay, injured or dead, with families without pay and in debt.
In July, an employee who had left Qatar with seven months of unpaid wages told us: “When surviving in Qatar became unaffordable despite charities to get food, we made the decision to return. They emptied me when I returned. ” Reunion is regularly a satisfied example when we bring gifts for families. Instead, I would return home empty-handed and with no savings on a price ticket that my circle of relatives bought with borrowed money. After more than a year and a part of waiting, he was nevertheless given the remarkable cheque through the Qatari embassy.
“It’s like a dream,” he said. Thanks to the compensation, I managed to get out of the debt trap in which my circle of relatives had been trapped for years. “
Death and damage cannot be repaired, but for both migrant workers and families hoping for compensation, monetary assistance (a small part of the occasion’s massive gains) can have far-reaching consequences. A large-scale attempt to bring back those aggrieved migrant staff while making the World Cup imaginable would send a harsh and positive message from FIFA and the Qatari authorities.
It is not too late to dedicate themselves to a fund of resources and end on a positive note this long and convulsive adventure that still puts the migrant team at the center of the World Cup they have made possible.