NAIROBI: A coalition of global human rights NGOs and trade unions led by Amnesty International has penned an open letter to world football’s governing body FIFA over potentially disastrous consequences in the context of human rights when it comes to expanding the 2022 World Cup, which is originally to be hosted by Qatar.
On Thursday, FIFA council members will meet in Miami to discuss the proposal of expanding the World Cup from 32 to 48 teams, with suggestions that additional matches could be played in other Gulf countries such as Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia or UAE.
In the open letter, the organizations reminded FIFA President Gianni Infantino that according to the governing body’s own policies, and in order for it to meet its corporate social responsibility to respect human rights, it must ensure that any country wishing to host a World Cup event first provides credible guarantees to meet international human rights law and labour standards, and develops clear action plans to prevent and mitigate potential abuses in connection to the tournament.
“There are clear human rights risks associated with adding new hosts for the 2022 World Cup, not least the potential widespread exploitation of migrant workers providing construction and other services for the World Cup that could cast a major shadow over the world’s biggest sporting event,” Amnesty International deputy head of global issues Stephen Cockburn said.
“Gianni Infantino has said he wants to make the World Cup more inclusive. This means FIFA must assess potential co-hosts in Gulf countries to ensure that the World Cup is not contributing or linked to human rights violations which are rife in the region.”
The NGOs expect FIFA to provide credible plans to prevent labour rights abuse, discrimination and restrictions on freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly in connection to the tournament.
The open letter has been signed by Amnesty International, Football Supporters Europe, Gulf Centre for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, International Trade Union Congress, Transparency International, UNI Global Union and the World Players Association.
On 31 March 2016, Amnesty International had published a report exposing abuse of construction workers building the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha which will host one of the 2022 World Cup semifinals. It added on to that premise recently that claiming that the company Mercury MENA, which is responsible for the engineering aspect had ‘failed to pay its workers thousands of dollars in wages and work benefits, leaving them stranded and penniless.’
According to France24, Amnesty claimed in January 2019 that at least 78 employees from Nepal, India and the Philippines had not been paid since February 2016 and were owed an average of $2,000 for some the equivalent of several months’ wages.
