SportsWorld Cup 2022: Qatar's Human Rights Problem

World Cup 2022: Qatar’s Human Rights Problem

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The popularity of football in France is incontestable and only Cycling and perhaps, Handball, come even close to commanding the type of influence that football carries in the country. This influence was quadrupled when the country’s national team, Les Bleus, won the FIFA World Cup in 2018, exactly 20 years after its previous victory, when it hosted and won. The concatenation of the impact of these pair of global honours, two decades apart, brought even more influence to football in France, making the sport all the more popular and the bodies attached to it, even more powerful.

The expectations of the French for their national team have come to see them as contenders for the trophy, whether within Europe, in the Euros football competition, or at the worldwide football extravaganza that is the World Cup. French football fans have therefore been feverishly expecting to celebrate the commencement of this year’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar alongside friends and family in dedicated fan zones throughout the country, while cheering the French team to victory in defence of their 2018 trophy. It was therefore shocking for the authorities of the football-loving country to purposely decide against setting up giant screens at these fan zones as a protest against the human rights situation in the host nation Qatar.

Last month, Paris joined a set of French cities that were taking some action against Qatar’s human rights record and environmental concerns when it announced that there will be no giant screens and fan zones for the World Cup. The decision is ballsy for the fact that the 2022 World Cup is expected to draw high numbers to these fan zones as France is the defending champion and several French players including Kylian Mbappe (PSG), William Saliba (Arsenal), Aurélien Tchouaméni (Real Madrid), Eduardo Camavinga (Real Madrid), Christopher Nkunku (RB Leipzig) have a dedicated fan following and have created some excitement for the national team’s prospects at the tournament. Yet, Paris is only one of the big French cities to rule out the giant screens in protest, as Lille, Marseille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg and Reims had also made that decision earlier on ethical grounds.

Qatar’s human rights and environmental problems, at the foundation of the protests from these French cities, have been the subject of extended media attention. In equal measure has been the power of the Arab nation’s financial muscle to get what it wants. An instance of this was its winning bid for the World Cup in the first place, especially given the competition it faced. In addition to that, the odds stacked against it as a country in the Arab region with very strong conservative Muslim customs and traditions, on the one hand, and the extreme, sweltering weather conditions that made it challenging to host football matches without regular breaks, made it seem impossible for it to get a winning bid through.

About 12 years ago, at the bidding process for the 2022 World Cup, it was up not only against countries that did not have these negatives but countries that had stakes in football, that had organised international football competitions and that had influence within the game such as the United States, South Korea, Japan and Australia.

However, Qatar shocked the world when it won the bid. The remarkable aspect about Qatar’s win was how convincing it was. After the first round of voting, Qatar already had more supporters than three of its four competitors put together and this support increased with the elimination of Australia, Japan, and South Korea. In the end, it was just the United States left and Qatar ultimately defeated the weight of America with an outstanding 14-8 result in its favour. In the aftermath of the winning bid, the amazement of the results soon turned to suspicion. It was not long before a barrage of claims of bribery and general corruption overshadowed Qatar’s winning bid. But, the bid held after it was determined that the Qatari proposal followed the due bidding process.

As at the time the hosting rights went to Qatar, the country had only three stadia and not much in terms of the infrastructure necessary to successfully host an expansive competition like the World Cup. There was also that bothersome disadvantage of summer temperatures that could go up to 50 degrees Celsius. This heat issue was particularly worth pointing out because Qatar’s desert temperatures exceeded levels allowed for both fans and footballers. FIFA rules explicitly state that play cannot be allowed in more than 32 degrees Celsius (89.6 degrees Fahrenheit) without mandatory cooling breaks. To sidestep this hurdle, Qatar promised to build solar-powered air cooling stadiums, and pour money into providing every necessary infrastructure to make the hosting of the competition possible. They were plans for a metro system of transportation, a new airport, and a substantial number of hotels to accommodate the near two million expected to enter the the Gulf peninsula state, with a native population of just over a million.

As dedicated to these promises as Qatar was, with the financial heft to make it happen, neither FIFA nor the government fully considered the work that will go into bringing this dream to life from the perspective of the workers involved. What came to light as Qatar put its enormous resources to work to bring about desired results was an unfortunate story of degradation of the human person. The conditions for the millions of migrant workers needed to build the massive infrastructure and stadia for the World Cup under the most extreme heat and despoiled state saw low-paid migrants from Asia and Africa become an exploited workforce. They were the significant human resources employed for the considerable number of infrastructure projects to get Qatar ready for the hosting and there were no labour rights commitments from Qatar requested for by FIFA even with the existence of human rights reports detailing abuses against migrant workers there.

In a 2016 report titled “Qatar World Cup of Shame,” Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch brought attention to the mistreatment of workers building stadiums. A subsequent study by The Guardian in 2021 revealed that between 2010 and 2020, at least 6,751 migrant workers—mostly from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka—died in Qatar as they worked to get the country ready for the World Cup. Additionally, Qatar’s treatment of these labourers constructing the country’s World Cup infrastructure has come under fire, including allegations of non-payment of wages, crowded living quarters, and forcible evacuation in advance of the competition.

Tens of thousands of employees have suffered from physical or mental health problems as a result of wage theft and other abuses, sacrificed their health working in the intense heat in Qatar, or have passed away in avoidable, unexplained, and uninvestigated accidents while abusive employers retain unchecked power over employees. Then, there is also the country’s institutionalisation of homophobia to keep in mind as well.

As a result of pressure from groups like Human Rights Watch, Qatar implemented some late reforms, including labour safeguards and the repeal of the kafala system, which forbade immigrant workers from changing jobs without the employer’s express approval. However, the efficacy of these reforms have been queried, with the new minimum wage being little over N1 an hour and scepticism regarding whether the kafala system reforms actually took place. Many of the injured and deceased did not receive these amendments to their working conditions until it was too late for them to benefit, and the majority of these reforms were either weakly enforced or had a limited scope. As a result, many workers who contributed to the construction of the World Cup’s infrastructure did not actually benefit, and both the government and FIFA have not yet agreed to set up remedy funds for the grieving families.

French cities are protesting these issues with the ban of giant screens, but they are hardly alone. To express their disapproval of these transgressions, the Danish clothing company Hummel declared that the jerseys of the national team of Denmark would bear a fading logo. Some team captains, like England’s Harry Kane, will use rainbow armbands to show their opposition to the homophobia in Qatar. A German minister openly questioned Qatar’s eligibility to host the competition, which caused Qatar to recall its ambassador to Germany. The Australian football team published a film denouncing violations of human rights in the Gulf state. Like the French cities, Barcelona announced that there will be no public viewings of World Cup games. At recent Borussia Dortmund games, supporters waved signs urging a boycott of the World Cup. But, as Olivier Véran, the French government spokesman said: “If we were to make the decision today, we would not give the World Cup to Qatar. However when something was decided 10 years ago by 100 countries, it’s difficult to say stop just a few weeks before it gets under way.”

The government in Qatar has engaged a formidable PR effort to deflect criticisms of its human rights record. The government-funded and Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network posted a video on its O2 digital platform in which it claimed that Western criticism of Qatar was motivated by “Qatarphobia,” with the West singling it out because it is an Arab and Muslim nation. But, a study by Amnesty International released in October and titled “Unfinished Business: What Qatar Must Do To Fulfil Promises On Migrant Workers’ Rights”, discovered that thousands of workers were still being denied wages or having them delayed, being denied rest days and were being exposed to unsafe working conditions.

Qatar still argues that progress has been made and that the tournament will be a force for good in the country. In a few days, the country will be at the centre of world attention for football’s most prestigious event. It is hoped that some remedy funds are obtained for the maimed, bereaved and those who put life and limbs at risk to make Qatar 2022 a reality.

About the Author

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Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.

Jude Obafemi, THEWILLhttps://thewillnews.com
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.

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