The world’s most famous sport is dominating the front pages, but for terrible reasons. On the 2nd of December, 2010, the world governing body for football, FIFA, awarded Qatar with the opportunity to host the FIFA World Cup 2022. There has been much debate on the circumstances of how they won the bid to host the World Cup. The Middle Eastern nation is known to be rather conservative when it comes to women and the LGBTQ community. Although this was a well-known fact, the voting committee still considered the country a viable option. Reports have stated that out of 22 members on the committee, more than half were paid off to vote for Qatar. An internal investigation was conducted by FIFA but no wrong doing was found.
The New York Times provides an in-depth look into one of the most corrupt organisations in world sports, FIFA, and how the acquittal of such blatant corruption should not come as a surprise. [1]
According to statistics portal, Statista, the FIFA World Cup held in Russia in 2018 had 517 million viewers, which is miles ahead of one of the biggest sporting events – the NFL Superbowl. Superbowl LIV (54) had around 150 million viewers. With such a huge number of viewers, you would think the world governing body for football would have a more rigid policy against corruption.
There have been numerous talks of nations boycotting the World Cup. Most notably, Danish caretaker Casper Fischer. According to the Independent, Fischer petitioned to the Danish Parliament – the Folketing – in order to prevent the country’s football team to participate in the Qatar World Cup. The boycott is explained in his petition, “We do not believe that we, as a democratic nation striving to live up to global human rights, can benefit from having some of the country’s most prominent sporting players participate in the finals and blue-stamp a dictatorship like Qatar.”
Sepp Blatter, former president of FIFA has been under scrutiny for the many years he served as head of the organisation. He is currently serving an eight year ban from football given by FIFA’s ethics committee. This ban was reduced to six years after an appeal.
He was banned in 2015 but his unproven crimes started long before that. He was president for an extensive 40-year period. The debatable decision to award the World Cup to Qatar was unsurprisingly under the helm of Blatter.
When the World Cup was awarded to Qatar in 2010, it had below-par football infrastructure. The domestic league in the country had little to no publicity. This changed somewhat in 2015 when Barcelona legend, Xavier Hernandez or popularly known as Xavi, decided to join Qatari side Al Sadd. Xavi went on to become coach of the team.
The popularity of the league rose considerably with one of the world’s most decorated footballers plying his trade in the Middle East. The reach and admiration of football is universal. Xavi was pleasantly surprised with the enthusiasm people showed for football in Qatar. In an article for Goal, he says, “When you walk around Doha, their passion for football is clear. I didn’t really know what to expect when I first moved here. But I must admit that I like practically everything about living in Qatar.”
Unfortunately, this enthusiasm can neither build stadiums nor end corruption.
The Qatar World Cup will feature eight stadiums. Out of which 3 have already been inaugurated, 1 has just been completed and 3 unfinished. These stadiums are meant to be state of the art creations with world class amenities around the venues. The construction of hotels, roads and a new airport are all part of the 2022 World Cup.
Additionally, the World Cup has to be held in the winter. This is because of the extremely high summer temperature – an average of around 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) to 45 degree Celsius (113 Fahrenheit).
Such complicated barriers should have deterred a voting committee, which ultimately leads to the question, why would they vote for it?
The answer – more than half the members of this committee were given “incentives” to vote for the Gulf state. This is explicitly explained in an article by the New York Times where the said officials were named and unravelled the extent of the corruption, from the voting of the World Cup held in Russia in 2018 to the voting of the World Cup to be held in 2022 in Qatar.[1]
The Guardian published a detailed article on the plight of migrant workers since 2010. It has been reported that more than 6500 workers or more have died since that fateful year. Most of these migrants come from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and various other countries where the labour cost is low. Workers from India suffered the most as more than 2500 workers have died. It has also been recorded that there have been at least 12 deaths per week since the commencement of these projects. [2]
These migrant workers have been lied to by the very people who recruited them. They are severely underpaid or not paid at all and they are being made to stay in disastrous conditions. Journalists have found that most of these workers are not able to even return home as their passports have been confiscated by their own employers, thus, cutting them off from any means of leaving the country. While this is the case for most, there are few who want to return home but are not able to due to the lack of finances.
The lack of empathy from the recruitment agencies and the Qatari government means that these workers are completely on their own and at the mercy of their employers. Out of the total number of deaths, most of them were deemed to have succumbed to “natural causes.” The government will not officially release the actual number of deaths but reports have suggested that 6500+ is just the tip of the iceberg as there have been numerous workers coming in from the Philippines and Kenya as well.
Families have been destroyed. Fathers, brothers and sons have been lost. Leaving for this tiny but rich country seemed like a dream come true for most. Little did they know the hardships that would follow. Some of these families have lost their main source of livelihood. How will they survive?
The individual stories of these workers must be shared braodly and their plight must be made more public. Real and concrete effort need to be made to try lessen the corruption and exploitation.
1 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/sports/soccer/qatar-and-russia-bribery-world-cup-fifa.html
2 https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/23/revealed-migrant-worker-deaths-qatar-fifa-world-cup-2022