In response to the complaints of fans and football associations globally, FIFA’s leadership wrote to countries competing in the World Cup urging them to “focus on football” and not drag the sport “into every ideological or political battle that exists”.  

This begs the question, why would FIFA want fans to focus solely on what’s happening on the pitch and ignore the context of the tournament? 

Over the course of Qatar’s 12-year, $200 billion project to host the World Cup, some 100 new hotels and 7 stadiums have been built, as well as a new metro system, new roads, and an extension to Hamad airport. Of the estimated 30,000 migrant workers who travelled to Qatar to prepare facilities for the World Cup, over 6,500 have died in the Gulf state. This equates to over one death per minute of football played throughout the tournament. A significant proportion of these deaths are linked to construction projects, where workers are reported to have endured working long hours in extreme temperatures of up to 50°C (122°F).  

The reported deaths are ardently denied by the Qatari authorities, being attributed to “natural causes”, often without further investigation. These are therefore not considered work-related and it would seem that thousands of migrant worker deaths remain unexplained, unscrutinised, and uncompensated. 

Alleged human rights violations have not been limited to labour abuses in construction, with migrant hospitality workers in FIFA-endorsed hotels alleged to have paid illegal recruitment fees of up to $2,750.   

Migrant workers from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and the Philippines were indispensable to making the World Cup 2022 possible. Football is celebrated in all these countries, with migrant workers’ communities likely to be part of the 5bn people expected to tune into the World Cup. Many of these workers will have contributed to the tournament at great cost and personal sacrifice in order to support the livelihoods of families at home.  

Yet, FIFA refuses to set up a compensation fund for migrant workers to remedy negative human rights impacts, despite earning £6.1bn from World Cup.  

By and large, there is limited evidence that organisations and businesses profiting from the tournament have engaged in human rights due diligence prior to or during the tournament. As it stands, fans’ trust in the power of sport to unite people and encourage equality may have been severely undermined over the Qatar World Cup. Evidence of thorough human rights due diligence, increased transparency and adequate remedies for negative human rights impacts would have gone a long way to restore that trust and mitigate the impact on families and communities that migrant workers left behind.   

On balance, it is a welcome development that a lively debate around human rights has been sparked by the Qatar World Cup and there are positive lessons that have been learned. Reforms to local labour laws in implementing a minimum wage and the abolition of the Kafala system are certainly signs of progress driven by the discussions surrounding the World Cup. Within FIFA itself, new human rights requirements for tournaments, which were developed in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, were implemented for the first time for a major event during the bidding process for the 2026 World Cup, set to be held in North America. 

Ardea will be exploring issues arising from Qatar 2022 in a World Cup Special podcast episode to be released in January 2023.  Sign up to our newsletter now to be the first to listen.