As with all other international sporting events, many people are looking forward towards the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. With a proposal that promised new innovative stadiums and infrastructure that would provide a “true international legacy with no white elephants”, the wealth and astronomical development of the oil-rich nation seemed to provide adequate backing for their promises.
Despite their extravagant proposal, ethical considerations regarding the development of the infrastructure for the World Cup has drawn considerable controversy. Being a longstanding open secret, migrant workers sponsored by in-country employers and working through Qatar’s “Kafala System” have formed the primary source of physical labor in the nation. Largely originating from South-East Asian countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, and India, they account for approximately 90% of the Qatari workforce and form the cheap labor used to fuel Qatar’s construction boom. In order to keep their costs low, recruitment agencies and construction contractor’s subject migrant workers to regular abuse and exploitation, including providing decrepit living conditions for their workers, promising false or delayed salaries, and confiscating travel documents to keep the labourers in a state of practical indentured and “forced labor.” As this inevitably translates into labor used for the 2022 World Cup, such an issue has weighed considerably upon the ethical considerations of FIFA and its choice of host countries.
Controversy over the relative cost of international sporting events, both financial and social, are not new. Recent Olympics have been described as “parties rather than investments”, with the costs of the 2008 Beijing and 2014 Sochi Olympics being the most expensive in history and providing little long-term benefits. Rather than being treated as an opportunity to upgrade a city’s infrastructure for long-term use, the facilities built for the mega sporting events have become increasingly focused on the temporary sporting events, and often at great social and financial costs to the host nation. Human rights concerns, such as intensified crackdowns on dissidents and eviction of marginalized communities for construction have long plagued the track record of such mega-sporting events. Despite such consistent trends of human rights issues afflicting the track record of mega sporting events, the situation Qatar remains unique to a certain extent. Unlike past concerns, the matter regarding migrant labor in Qatar is distinctive, since its overwhelming reliance on foreign migrant labor belies a novel “globalized” dynamic that largely stems from malleable economic factors rather than ingrained political and social arguments.
In regards to FIFA’s treatment of Qatar’s migrant labor, it has a clear duty and an obligation to ensure that migrant labor is treated in a fair and responsible fashion. Barring past implications of corruption and bribery that have plagued FIFA’s reputation regarding the selection of venues for its World Cup, FIFA maintains an obligation towards their mission statement of “transparency, accountability, inclusivity and cooperation” both on and off the soccer pitch. Although an outright ban on migrant labor is both unfeasible and counter-productive due the heavy financial burden of the workers, FIFA’s responsibility as a major sporting authority is to ensure that the working conditions and compensation for such migrant labourers is fair and adequate. By applying pressure on Qatar, it can ensure that at a minimum, new safety regulations, laws, a climate of labor reform and an increased air of security for migrant workers establishes a greater foothold in a country. It must be noted that such calls for greater pressure on Qatar are not novel or new, but have already been implemented, albeit with a rather underwhelming effect. While Qatar has promised to introduce greater screening of contracting companies and introduce “contractual-employment relations”, such promises and reforms are inevitably doomed to fail without the proper resources and determination to enforce them. While the UN and FIFA have deemed Qatar’s labor reforms to be adequate in ensuring its responsibility towards migrant workers, the large number of potential loopholes within the labor reforms, especially back-end financial arrangements provide plentiful methods of getting around such safeguards, with the “devil being in the details.” Consequently, organizations such as Amnesty International are largely pessimistic about a long-term possibility regarding a significant campaign of migrant-labor reform within Qatar without calls for further accountability and observance.
Despite the relative failures within Qatar itself in regards to the 2022 Games, the long-term implications of FIFA’s reaction to the issue of migrant labor plays on the future development of mega-sporting events. Similar to the upward trend regarding the development and execution of sporting events, FIFA’s treatment and reaction to any potential abuses in Qatar can be used to set important benchmarks in regards to future considerations of human and labour rights in mega-sporting events. Mirroring the benchmarks set for the increasing costs of mega-sporting events, it needs to be matched by greater accountability from Sporting Associations to ensure that the increasing magnitude of their events spread greater benefit than cost. While it is understandable that the extent of FIFA’s influence in Qatar’s current migrant labor situation may be limited in regards to its established investment in the nation, FIFA must ensure that in its future criteria for host nations a “human rights” component so as to advocate for further responsible development. To a certain extent, the independent economic motivations attached to migrant labor provides an excellent starting block and issue which FIFA can tackle in regards to future World Cups.
While FIFA and other Sporting Associations may face opposition and difficulty considering both the decreasing number of applications for hosting mega-sporting events and the likely opposition from states regarding criticism of their human rights records, the implementation of such measures are needed to augment the greater globalist and transnational connections faced by such sporting events. Unlike the past where most issues regarding the development of the games could largely be considered “domestic” issues, the current issue of migrant labor and labor rights posits the likely trend of an increasingly internationalized face of human rights, and the accompanying need for multifaceted approaches to such problems. Inevitably, this may require sporting organizations including FIFA to reinvent themselves and introduce rather dramatic reforms how it organizes its events. Similar to recommendations made to the Olympics, it may be time for FIFA and other large sporting organizations to adopt new systems of choosing hosts, such as a rotating list of host cities, which may provide the appropriate organizational framework to get over such hurdles.
By Timothy Law