There was also one fatality during the construction of the al-Bayt stadium in al-Khour. It has now been announced that the World Cup opening game will be played here on November 20th.
Photo: imago/Laci Perenyi
The construction work for the eight stadiums has long since been completed. The modern metro lines in the capital Doha have been in operation for years. And in the West Bay business district, hotels, shopping malls and company headquarters are opening. This growth would have been unthinkable without the men’s soccer World Cup, which is due to start in exactly 100 days. But it also came at a high price: many workers were exploited, some of whom even died on construction sites in the country. This has been debated for a long time, but one crucial question is: has international pressure made everyday life easier for migrant workers in Qatar since the World Cup was awarded twelve years ago? “An important process has been initiated,” says Dietmar Schäfers, Vice-President of the Building and Woodworkers’ International (BWI). »Some things have improved on the World Cup construction sites. But there is still a lot to do where the public doesn’t look too closely.«
Experts like Schäfers say that particularly in the first few years after the World Cup was awarded, important time was lost for reforms. The Qatari hereditary monarchy does not tolerate independent media, trade unions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). For a long time, international human rights organizations focused on the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and then on the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Nevertheless, with campaigns such as “Red Card for Fifa”, trade union alliances such as IG Bau gradually turned their focus to Qatar. Labor organizations such as the International Labor Organization (ILO) filed complaints against Qatar. Reports from European media and Amnesty International and growing pressure from fans have forced sponsors to take a more critical stance on the 2022 World Cup over time.
The focus of criticism was the so-called kafala system, which is practiced in a number of states in the Gulf region. As a condition for their entry, the workers, who mainly came from South Asia, were given sponsors who could keep their passports, make their departure more difficult and prevent them from changing jobs – officially to fight crime, because the countries of origin usually have no extradition agreements with Qatar. “As early as 2015, the Qatari government claimed that the kafala system had been abolished,” says activist Binda Pandey, who campaigns for the rights of Nepalese workers in Qatar. »In fact, many new laws have been introduced, but there is often a lack of implementation and control.«
Over the past six years, the Qatari Ministry of Labor has set guidelines that, on paper at least, resemble European standards, such as working hours, rest periods and complaints procedures. “But many workers don’t dare to take legal action against their employer,” says Pandey. »They are afraid that they will be deported and will not earn any money at all.« In Nepal, almost 60 percent of all households are dependent on labor migration. Money received from abroad accounts for almost a third of the gross domestic product. Around 350,000 Nepalese work in Qatar alone.
Many employers, who often have family ties to the ruling family, apparently feel untouchable. And so NGOs like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch document numerous violations of the new laws. In many cases, passports are withheld and promised wages are not paid. Likewise, employers threaten their employees and prevent them from attending court hearings. Recruitment agencies still charge workers, some of them horrendous placement fees, so that they can find a job at all. Many of these then live in strictly monitored accommodation.
There are now dispute settlement committees in Qatar that are supposed to mediate between employers and workers. The ILO has an office in Doha, and trade union federations are also on site for inspections, but they often only come with advance notice. After all, these are conditions that neighboring countries such as Saudi Arabia still do not allow. Exact figures for Qatar are almost impossible to verify, but meanwhile more than 20,000 workers are said to have successfully sued for their lost wages. However, around 2.5 million migrants live in the country, which is 90 percent of Qatar’s total population. “The resources are still too low,” says Lisa Salza from Amnesty International in Switzerland. “The complaints offices in Qatar cannot process the complaints in a reasonable time.”
Findings like these suggest that the situation has hardly improved. Trade unions, fan groups and human rights organizations such as Amnesty International are therefore calling for a compensation program for migrant workers from the world football association Fifa. And also for the bereaved, such as that of Jaleshwar Prasad, an Indian who died in 2016 while building the al-Bayt Stadium in al-Khour, in which, according to a decision made on Thursday, the World Cup opening game between Qatar and Ecuador will take place on November 20th is to be carried out. The demand is: As the most influential institution in football, Fifa should provide at least 440 million dollars, which would correspond to the total World Cup prize money.
It will probably be years before the actual impact of the World Cup on state and society in Qatar can be seriously assessed. In any case, the debate has changed the sports industry. At the beginning of June, the German national soccer team took part in an information event with critical activists and NGOs – unimaginable ten years ago. A number of host cities for the 2024 European Football Championship in Germany have been working with human rights organizations since the application phase for a sustainability concept. Venues for the 2026 World Cup in the USA, Canada and Mexico are also moving in this direction.
“Hopefully, the discussion about Qatar will lead to sports associations making the allocation of major events subject to conditions at an early stage,” says Jonas Burgheim, co-founder of the Center for Human Rights and Sport. “But it can’t stop there. Professional clubs should also look at the production conditions of their sponsors and jersey manufacturers.«
Fifa has developed a human rights concept. Nevertheless, she quickly relocated her 2021 Club World Cup from corona-plagued Japan to the United Arab Emirates, which is still behind Qatar in the press freedom rankings of the organization Reporters Without Borders. On the Persian Gulf, the World Cup hosts are eyed critically by their neighbors. The ruling houses in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates fear that the Qatari reforms will put them under international pressure. “There are also conservative forces in Qatar who would like to roll back reforms,” says trade unionist Dietmar Schäfers. Should these forces achieve their goal, then it would probably only be the case after the World Cup, when the attention is elsewhere.
In the remaining weeks until the World Cup, more books and documentaries on the human rights situation in the Gulf will be published. But geopolitics have already changed: Western democracies like Germany have been trying to get gas supplies from Doha since the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. Suddenly, the rights of workers there were no longer that important.
