1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In just six months, when the 2022 FIFA World Cup kicks off at the Al Thumama Stadium in Doha, Qatar’s crowning moment will have arrived. Following 12 years of enormous financial investment, huge construction projects and no shortage of controversy, the world’s most watched sporting event will be broadcast to billions of people around the world. Behind the World Cup’s opening event, however, are the stories of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who travelled to Qatar to build and service the stadiums, hotels, and transport systems needed to make the tournament possible. Leaving their families in search of better jobs, many found themselves caught in a deeply exploitative labour system, denied their fundamental rights to decent working conditions and access to remedy. Since FIFA awarded the World Cup to Qatar in 2010, much has been lost by workers and their families – money, freedoms and even lives – and too little has been done to put right these wrongs. In recent years, both Qatar and FIFA made some progress with Qatar introducing important and promising measures aimed at improving workers’ rights and FIFA recognizing its human rights responsibilities. However, the lack of enforcement of Qatar’s labour reforms, and the narrow group of workers covered by FIFA’s commitments, have limited their impact. Even if these measures were fully effective, they would not negate FIFA’s responsibilities and Qatar’s obligations to address and remedy the historical labour abuses suffered by so many workers over so many years. The scale of abuses requiring remediation since 2010 remains vast. Hundreds of thousands of workers who toiled to make the World Cup possible have paid exorbitant and illegal recruitment fees, yet few have ever been reimbursed. Thousands of others have been cheated of their wages by abusive employers, made to work excessive hours, or subjected to conditions amounting to forced labour. Workers have even paid the ultimate price, losing their lives after labouring without adequate protection in Qatar’s extreme heat. Yet their deaths were rarely investigated, and their families hardly ever compensated. In awarding the World Cup to Qatar without conditions to improve labour protections, and then subsequently failing to adequately prevent or mitigate abuses, FIFA contributed to a wide range of labour abuses that were both preventable and predictable. While it is too late to erase the suffering of past abuses, FIFA and Qatar can and should act both to prevent further abuses from taking place, and to provide remedy to all the workers who made the tournament possible. For this report, Amnesty International has drawn on over a decade of investigating labour abuses in Qatar, as well as reports from others. Researchers also reviewed a wide range of FIFA’s policies, strategies and documents relating to the 2022 World Cup. The organisation also reviewed documents from FIFA’s main partner in Qatar, the “Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy”, – the Qatari body in charge of planning and delivering the World Cup infrastructure. Amnesty International shared its findings and recommendations with FIFA, Qatar and the Supreme Committee. FIFA responded sharing the measures it has taken to protect workers’ rights, and stated it has “taken note of and are assessing the proposition” to set up a remediation programme.
FIFA’S FAILURE TO PREVENT AND MITIGATE ABUSES When FIFA awarded the World Cup to Qatar in 2010, the country’s extreme dependence on migrant workers, and the existence of severe labour abuse and exploitation in the country, were already well documented. NGOs, the ILO, UN Special Procedures, the US Department of State, regional and international media outlets, and even Qatar’s own National Human Rights Committee had for years highlighted the grim situation of migrant workers in Qatar as well as other human rights violations and abuses. It was therefore
PREDICTABLE AND PREVENTABLE WHY FIFA AND QATAR SHOULD REMEDY THE 2022 WORLD CUP ABUSES Amnesty International
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