This year’s World Cup, held in the tiny nation of Qatar, is every bit the glamorous event FIFA (professional soccer’s governing body) wanted it to be. But the 2022 World Cup is also mired in controversy, with allegations of egregious human rights abuses and widespread corruption.
This post discusses human rights abuses associated with the 2022 World Cup that are currently under global scrutiny. We look briefly at these abuses and some of the systems that drive them. We then suggest basic steps that FIFA and other world sporting event organizers should take to address human rights abuses behind mega sporting events.
The 2022 World Cup & Human Rights Abuses
Qatar is a small country, with just three million inhabitants, of whom about 90 percent are non-citizens. Migrant workers perform most construction labor in Qatar and were responsible for building all of the new infrastructure necessary for this year’s World Cup – from stadiums to hotels, apartments, a train system, and roads. The abusive treatment of migrant workers building World Cup infrastructure in Qatar is perhaps the most salient critique of this year’s event.
Migrant workers, many of whom are from Nepal, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, were recruited from their countries of origin to construct a $300 billion World Cup project in Qatar. Along the way, many migrant workers paid high recruitment fees, had their passports confiscated, went unpaid or were paid very low wages, and worked through searingly hot summers. (After years of debate, FIFA scheduled this World Cup in November instead of June or July, finding the extreme summer temperatures too dangerous for players, officials, and fans.)
According to The Guardian, 6,500 migrant workers died in Qatar in the decade after the country was awarded the World Cup bid in 2010. The number of migrant workers who have died since the bid win is likely higher, as the The Guardian estimate does not include deaths of workers from the Philippines or Kenya – from where many migrant workers hail – or data since 2020.
The New York Times reports that on opening day of this year’s World Cup, more than 200 migrant laborers hired to work concessions were left by their employer for an entire day without access to food, water, or toilet facilities. Despite evidence that thousands of laborers have suffered abuses, including death, in the course of work directly and indirectly related to the World Cup, Qatar claims only three workers died from “work-related deaths” and 37 from “non-work related deaths on World Cup-related projects.” Qatari officials and FIFA leaders have shrugged off related criticisms. Just last week, a Filipino worker making repairs at the Sealine Resort (the Saudi Arabia team’s training site) died after he “slipped off a ramp while walking alongside a vehicle and fell headfirst against concrete.” Qatar’s World Cup CEO stated “We’re in the middle of a World Cup … And we have a successful World Cup. And this is something you want to talk about right now? A worker died, our condolences to his family but it is strange that is something you want to focus on as your first question.”
Unfortunately, labor abuses related to the 2022 World Cup aren’t limited to those against migrant workers in Qatar. They extend beyond Qatar’s borders to the laborers in international supply chains producing gear like jerseys and soccer cleats for multinational brands selling World Cup branded merchandise.
For example, in May of this year, workers at an Adidas supplier in Cambodia went on strike, demanding payment of withheld wages. In response, the Adidas supplier had union leaders arrested. In October, factory workers producing soccer cleats for Adidas went on strike, demanding a pay increase from $2.27 to $3.78 per day. In response, managers militarized the factory, bringing in soldiers to intimidate workers and fired 26 workers in a clear attempt to punish them for organizing.
In addition to widespread allegations of labor rights violations associated with the World Cup, FIFA is under scrutiny for the World Cup’s climate impacts and choice of venue for the games despite Qatar’s longstanding history of discrimination and violence against LGBTQ people.
Despite FIFA’s claims for this year’s games to be “the first carbon neutral FIFA World Cup in history,” described more below, the event will contribute to climate change in ways both expected and unexpected. FIFA originally estimated – then backtracked – that the 2022 World Cup would produce 3.6 million tons of carbon dioxide (which it planned to offset with carbon credits), although some estimates peg that number as eight times too low. Qatar itself generates most of its revenue (presumably including revenue used to finance the World Cup) from the extraction of fossil fuels, and the country has the highest rate of per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world. Running air conditioning and lighting systems across the country during the World Cup won’t help the country’s numbers this year.
Finally, the World Cup is taking place in a country with longstanding abuses against women and LGBTQ people. According to Human Rights Watch, possible abuses against women related to the World Cup in Qatar include physical and sexual abuse of women migrant domestic workers. And while Qatari authorities have indicated that anti-LGBTQ rules will not be enforced against foreigners during the World Cup, these exceptions do not apply to Qataris. Furthermore, LGBTQ individuals have been subject to discrimination and violence in the lead up to the games. Human Rights Watch has documented at least six cases of “severe and repeated beatings'' of LGBTQ individuals in Qatari police custody between 2019 and 2022.
Systems Enabling Widespread Abuses
It’s apparent that multiple overlapping factors have contributed to the widespread abuses connected to this year’s World Cup– the biggest sporting event in the world.
The kafala system: An abusive system left over from colonialism ripe for abuse of migrants.
The kafala system—a recruitment and employment scheme that gives employers excessive control over employees—is one feature of the Qatari economy that gave rise to labor abuses in the build up to the World Cup. This system, which colonial Europeans brought to the Arab world, is still used throughout the Gulf region and “leaves workers dependent on their employers for their legal residency and status in the country.” Not surprisingly, this dependency makes it easy for employers to take advantage of workers. Workers have reported paying high recruitment fees to get their jobs and going into debt to do so. Once in Qatar, under the kafala system workers were not allowed to change jobs without their employers’ permission, nor could they even leave the country. Many workers had their passports withheld, and the working conditions were often dangerous. Workers also often lived in crowded and dirty dorms. Together, these conditions suggest that there was a high risk of forced labor for many of the workers involved in building the stadiums and hotels now in use. In 2017, facing criticism, Qatar began to dismantle parts of the kafala system. The country passed a new labor law in 2020, increasing the minimum wage and allowing workers to change employers without permission. While this was an important step, working conditions will only improve with meaningful implementation and oversight, and the kafala system facilitated abuses against migrant laborers building World Cup infrastructure in the years before the system began to be rolled back.
Corruption: Human rights abuses and corruption go hand-in-hand, and FIFA is notoriously corrupt.
This World Cup has been clouded by a litany of corruption allegations since FIFA first awarded the tournament to Qatar in 2010. (Russia’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup, awarded at the same time, was also mired in allegations of bribery.) Just this week, members of the European Parliament who have defended FIFA’s choice of Qatar as this year’s World Cup host have come under investigation for accepting bribes from Qatari government officials. So far, four parliamentarians have been arrested. While the layers of corruption around this year’s World Cup will continue to be revealed, it is clear that corruption facilitated the development of the mega-event with, at the very least, a blind eye from FIFA and government officials with respect to human rights abuses.
Sportswashing: Governments sometimes use sporting events to distract from human rights abuses.
The sponsors of global sporting events, including but not limited to FIFA, would like us to believe that their events are either apolitical or forces for unity and equality, but this has never been the reality. Historically, organizers take advantage of, distract from, and in some cases further entrench or worsen, state and corporate practices that harm workers, communities, and the environment. “Sportswashing” is a term some analysts are using to describe the phenomenon of using sporting events to distract from obvious human rights abuses. For example, just last winter, China hosted the Winter Olympics, during a period in which it was committing genocide against the Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim ethnic minorities. While millions of Uyghurs were interned in western China, athletes from around the world prepared to partake in a mass event of glamor. This twenty-first century reality reflects dynamics that have been around for decades – since Nazi Germany hosted the Olympics in 1935 and Argentina held the World Cup in 1978 during the military dictatorship under which more than 30,000 people “disappeared.” Sportswashing has arguably allowed Qatar, an absolute monarchy, to rebrand itself as a luxury tourist destination destination despite ongoing discrimination and abuse against women, LGBTQ individuals, and migrant workers.
Greenwashing: Entities like FIFA use misleading statements on climate and environmental impacts to skirt responsibilities.
FIFA didn’t invent greenwashing– the use of public messaging to convey an image of sustainability while distracting from actual practices that harm the environment– but it’s done a great job of honing its greenwashing skills. FIFA has become quite artful at using major sporting events to greenwash its actions. For example, World Cup organizers have claimed the event is to be “fully carbon neutral” even before it concludes, which, even if FIFA were on the right track (which it is very much not), would be impossible to tell in advance. In a recent article for the Scientific American, scientist and former professional soccer player Jules Boycoff rebuked FIFA’s carbon neutrality claims, deeming them as “carry[ing] the unmistakable tinge of greenwashing: a public display of concern for the environment and an inclination to claim credit for providing solutions while doing the bare minimum, if anything, to make actual ecological improvements.” Greenwashing has arguably allowed FIFA and Qatari World Cup organizers to downplay the actual climate impacts of the World Cup.
Towards a Better World Cup
FIFA must begin by implementing a few basic regulations, starting with operationalizing its own Human Rights Policy, which it adopted in 2017.
Similarly, FIFA should operationalize and enforce its Sustainable Sourcing Code. A major gap in this code, like many other codifications of human rights obligations in supply chains, is that it is not enforceable by workers, those who are most affected by code violations. To be truly impactful, FIFA’s code should be worker-enforceable.
All host countries of the World Cup should have clear laws and regulations to ensure that all workers involved in building stadiums, hotels, or other infrastructure – whether or not they are directly employed by FIFA – are freely employed, and that those workers have access to redress for labor abuses, no matter their visa or citizenship status. This means that workers should not have to – or be allowed to – pay recruitment fees, should not be tied to their employers, should have clean and safe living conditions, and should not be working in dangerous conditions.
The next World Cup will be held in 2026 in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. This is a great chance to make sure that workers – from those in the World Cup host countries to workers across international supply chains – are treated fairly. FIFA is skilled at the PR aspects of the issues to come; it has already released an outline of human rights due diligence steps for the 2026 games. As FIFA develops its “sustainability strategy,” which is to “focus on ensuring that FIFA and its local subsidiaries embed respect for human rights across their activities,” it should take seriously the lessons from the widespread abuses associated with the World Cup this year and set up clear paths for redress for harmed workers.
As is true in so many industries, the human rights, labor, and climate abuses visible in this World Cup are caused by systems of unregulated transnational supply chains, corruption, and sportswashing – all interconnected abuses carried out by the rich and powerful. While we hope that FIFA makes real changes in the near future, we know it is unlikely. Most of the time, these institutions, like many corporations, need to be pulled kicking and screaming away from their abusive and corrupt pasts and towards more law-abiding futures. Especially because it’s more expensive to do things correctly. We have a chance to push FIFA just a little more in 2026. We need to grab it.
Allie Brudney and Avery Kelly are Staff Attorneys at Corporate Accountability Lab.
