In a TV interview with Piers Morgan that aired on Monday, Hassan al-Thawadi, secretary general of Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, revealed that there have been between 400 and 500 worker deaths associated with preparations for the World Cup.
Since it was announced in 2010 that Qatar would host the World Cup, the country has improved infrastructure to support the event, employing large amounts of migrant workers, many of whom are likely to have perished in the process, per a recent episode of ESPN’s “E60.”
According to CNN, al-Thawadi had previously said there were three deaths in relation to the World Cup, with 37 more attributed to “other reasons.”
Now, this staggering figure points to a largely ignored tragedy and flawed labor system, kafala, that human rights organizations have been quick to recognize.
What is the controversy?
Since Qatar was chosen to host the 2022 World Cup, it has been plagued by controversy surrounding migrant workers, extreme heat conditions and allegations of bribery during the voting process, per NPR.
The lack of infrastructure to support the World Cup was immense, so Qatar jumped to embrace this new ambition. According to NPR, 90% of Qatar’s workforce are migrant workers. Investigations have found that working conditions were unsafe.
With 400-500 deaths attributed to World Cup staging, FIFA and Qatar are facing backlash for their lack of action to curb casualties.
A Guardian investigation found that 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since 2010, though this figure does not include other countries of origin.
FIFA and Qatari authorities also contested that figure, which has not been directly proven to be linked to the World Cup.
What is kafala?
Stemming from British colonial rule in Qatar, kafala affords a private entity control over migrant workers through sponsorships. It is still used widely in the Middle East and has been supposedly abolished in Qatar, though reforms have not been well enforced and critics argue that it hasn’t actually been abolished.
Under this system, migrant workers must seek their employer’s permission to get a new job, leave their current job and to leave the country, per the Council on Foreign Relations.
Because their sponsors are the only ones that can extend or terminate sponsorships, workers’ residency status and employment are decided by their employer, a dangerous position for them.
Due to this power imbalance, it is not unusual for employers to dock, withhold or delay paying wages, which they are unlikely to be held accountable for.
In addition to the worker’s extremely limited agency, they also usually receive no protection from labor ministries, as it is typically not under their jurisdiction. Kafala is almost always controlled by the country’s interior ministries.
As a result of kafala, workers have reported excessive working hours, unpaid wages and massive debt accrual due to payments to their employers before they could ever work, which are all characterized by NGOs as conditions of modern slavery, per The Athletic.
In 2020, Qatar reformed the system to allow workers to transfer jobs without permission from their employer and to raise the minimum wage. Critics argue, though, that these reforms aren’t sufficient and grander change is necessary.
What is Qatar doing to fix the problem?
In his interview with Morgan, al-Thawadi said the country is working on improving conditions for workers, saying “one death is a death too many.”
Al-Thawadi said that labor reform is necessary in Qatar, but added that the reforms that have been done so far were not because of the World Cup. “These are improvements that we knew that we had to do because of our own values,” he said, per CNN.
What are human rights groups saying?
Human rights groups are outraged at both al-Thawadi’s admission to a higher death toll than previously given, Qatar’s apparent lack of regard for migrant workers and accountability.
According to Human Rights Watch, one way for Qatar to address the workers’ deaths is to compensate their families, as well as workers who were subjected to extreme hardship due to their work.
Qatari authorities, however, have publicly rejected the proposal of a compensation fund that would help families of migrant workers who died from “natural causes,” but whose deaths were not given proper investigation, according to Human Rights Watch.
Without a work-related cause of death, families cannot request compensation, despite the fact that FIFA and Qatar have failed to protect workers from dangerously high heat during their work, per Time magazine.
Human Rights Watch asserts, “One death is indeed too many, but there are thousands of migrant worker deaths that remain unexplained, uninvestigated, and uncompensated.”