Labour Rights and the Qatar World Cup 2022

David Harris shares some information about the human right atrocities in Qatar in preparation for 2022

Five years ago, Qatar won its bid to host the 2022 World Cup. The country will spend an estimated US$100 billion on infrastructure in preparation.

Migrant workers in Qatar comprise 80 percent of the population. Even at those numbers, the migrant worker community is acutely vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. The prohibition on trade unions, the kafala system of sponsorship-based employment, illegal recruitment fees, and the routine confiscation of passports expose migrant workers to extremely inhuman conditions.

The kafala sponsorship system creates a situation where migrant workers’ legal residence depends on the employer as the sponsor. Workers usually pay extremely high recruitment fees, and employers regularly confiscate their passports when they finally arrive in Qatar.

Workers can become undocumented when employers report them as having absconded, or when they fail to pay to renew workers’ annual ID cards. A lack of proper documentation exposes workers to the risk of arrest, detention, and deportation.

Migrant workers commonly report that employers fail to pay their wages on time - if ever. They are also prohibited from changing jobs without the sponsoring employer’s consent and with express permission of the Interior Ministry.

Migrant workers in Qatar must obtain an exit visa from their sponsor in order to leave Qatar. This all, effectively, reduces their personhood to indentured servitude.

Migrant workers are not permitted to unionize or strike, although they constitute as much as 99% of the private sector workforce in Qatar.

Migrant workers also often suffer from inhuman living conditions. Many live in cramped, unsafe, and unsanitary conditions - especially those who are forced to work without documentation.

The Guardian reported last year that Nepalese migrant workers die at a rate of one every two days. In total, the total Qatar death toll of workers from Nepal, India and Bangladesh at nearly 1,000 in 2012 and 2013.

Human Rights Watch concludes that Qatar should reform its regulatory and legal framework to protect its critical and suffering migrant worker population.