Qatar is a Middle Eastern country that attracted the international spotlight for its improbable award of the 2022 World Cup back in 2010. This was an historic event in the history of the World Cup because it was the first time a Middle Eastern country was awarded the right to host the games. However, this tremendous event has been overshadowed by stories of abuse of migrant workers tasked with building the infrastructure for this momentous event. Due in part to FIFA’s history of corruption and Qatar’s procurement process of employing companies without investigating their employment practices, a sporting event that was meant to be enjoyed by millions of people is shrouded in disgust and death. Without the intervention of FIFA’s member nations enforcing more stringent practices to avoid the atrocities of Qatar and World Cups before it, more people will continue to be taken advantage of. Introducing an independent governing body that is separate from FIFA would alleviate some of the problems facing the procurement issues that plagued Qatar by allowing independent investigators to determine whether a host country has sufficiently developed and mature procurement practices to build infrastructure for the greatest tournament in the world.
At the end of the fall 2022 season, fans and players migrated from all over the world to watch the twenty-second installment of the World Cup in Qatar. The 2022 World Cup was especially significant because it was the first time that a Middle Eastern country hosted the tournament and the first time that it was played in the winter. These fans bore witness to some of the most elegant stadiums in the world, like the Al Bayt Stadium that housed many of the group stage games of this magnificent tournament. For fans all over the world, this event was a time to rejoice and celebrate soccer, which is known as the beautiful game because it evokes feelings of joy and enthusiasm for those playing and spectating. However, for the thousands of migrant workers living in squalid conditions in Qatar, the aforementioned “beautiful game” could not be further from the truth.
Across the Middle East, and especially in the Gulf States like Qatar, the governments of these nations have turned to migrant workers to fill their labor shortages. Ahead of the World Cup, Qatar had a population of approximately of 2.1 million people, of which one and a half million—or ninety percent—are migrant workers. Hosting an event of this magnitude required building multiple stadiums, hotels for the players and the fans, and an airport capable of supporting a massive influx of people, among other things. Because of Qatar’s small population, it probably would have been impossible to adequately prepare for this event without hiring migrant workers.
To build the infrastructure necessary to host the World Cup, people traveled from all over the world to Qatar with promises of decent salaries and good working conditions. But, many quickly discovered that it was all a ruse.
Since the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) awarded the right to host the World Cup to Qatar in 2010, Qatar’s procurements for the event have led to significant human rights violations. In fact, FIFA has received scrutiny in recent years for corruption tainting the selection process of World Cup sites. Because of this, ill-equipped countries like Qatar were awarded the bid and thus turned to illegal labor practices to adequately prepare for the games. In describing this issue, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, Uzra Zeya, stated that “[t]he World Cup presents a challenge in terms of the increased likelihood or possibilities to exploit vulnerable migrant workers and it’s all the more important to enforce the laws in place and to see more efforts to prosecute perpetrators of human trafficking.”
As the organization responsible for organizing the World Cup, FIFA is morally and legally responsible for overseeing that the host city complies with FIFA’s bidding process and regulations to prevent human rights violations. However, different countries’ government investigations into FIFA’s alleged bribery and breaches of corporate fiduciary duties have revealed that FIFA has not adequately performed its responsibilities, leading to outcry from such groups as DLA Piper, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and International Trade Union Confederation. Although FIFA has since created new provisions, like the adoption of the FIFA Human Rights Policy in May 2017, to combat the abuses of migrant workers, FIFA must undertake measures to protect the lives of migrant workers in Qatar and workers at future World Cups.
This Note argues that Qatar’s procurement processes to prepare for the World Cup led to human rights atrocities that illustrate the need for an international human rights governing body that is independent of FIFA to oversee the compliance of the host country procurement activities with regulations governing the fair and safe treatment of migrant workers. Part II of this Note will discuss both FIFA’s selection process of the host country and Qatar’s procurement process for providing the necessary infrastructure to host the World Cup. This section will also provide an overview of the history of human rights violations regarding the World Cup and how Qatar has contributed to these human rights atrocities, even though Qatar has claimed to have taken steps to protect its workers. To resolve the issues relating to World Cup procurement, Parts III and IV propose that the member nations of FIFA create an independent international governing body like the International Labor Organization to oversee host countries’ compliance with the procurement rules set forth by this organization. Finally, this Note will discuss the issues facing an independent governing body and why this body will need to garner support from countries like the United States to limit the power of FIFA.
FIFA’s introduction of new human rights initiatives, coupled with Qatar’s elimination of the Kafala system and replacement with a more worker-friendly procurement plan, was nothing more than a sacrificial gesture that ultimately hides the fact that human rights violations were still being committed even two weeks before the start of the 2022 World Cup. The lives of migrant workers will not be protected until these parties are held accountable.
To determine what led to the human rights violations in Qatar leading up to the World Cup, it is important to look at both FIFA’s selection process and the Qatari government’s procurement process for awarding contracts to vendors. By understanding how Qatar won the World Cup bid and the Qatari government’s migrant worker policies, it becomes apparent how these human rights violations began and why it took so long for a change to occur. Therefore, the discussion will follow with FIFA’s World Cup selection process and the accusations that led to an overhaul of FIFA’s executive board; the shocking award of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar that created a need for an influx of migrant workers; and the Kafala system that has since been dismantled.
FIFA is an international governing body for the association of soccer comprised of 211 affiliated countries, making it larger than the United Nations (UN). The mission statement was updated in 2020 with the addition of respecting human rights, likely due to backlash from the public about the treatment of migrant workers in the years prior to the World Cup in Qatar. FIFA’s current mission statement is to develop the game, touch the world, and build a better future.
Submitting a bid to host the World Cup is like bidding on a contract for the United States federal government. FIFA typically announces an invitation to prospective countries to bid on hosting the World Cup seven to ten years before the event is slated to take place. The window to apply to be the host of the World Cup typically lasts between three to four weeks. Because of this short timeline, host countries begin compiling the necessary information needed to put forth their bid for the games much earlier. Once countries have inquired about hosting the World Cup, they then have six weeks to complete the application.
The bidding countries work together with their federal governments to fulfill FIFA’s World Cup hosting requirements, like the number of stadiums required to host the event, how the host countries’ government plans to pay for additional infrastructure to be built, and deadlines to complete these construction projects. Before official voting on the host country commences, officials from FIFA go on a four-day tour of each prospective host country to determine whether they have the capacity to hold such a massive event. This process determines the best suited venue for the World Cup. In 2010, this process determined Qatar to be the best suited county for the 2022 World Cup despite Qatar’s lack of stadiums, hotels, airports, and transportation.
Many people often believe that FIFA selects the host country of the World Cup completely at random, but that could not be further from the truth. Today, FIFA uses an exhaustive ballot system every seven years to determine which country will host the World Cup based on the pool of countries that meet FIFA’s requirements. This occurs every seven years in order to give the host nation ample time to prepare for the event. According to FIFA, any country can submit a bid to host the World Cup, provided that the continent did not host the previous two World Cups. This means that in 2030, an Asian country cannot host the World Cup because Qatar hosted in 2022.
FIFA’s requirements for determining an eligible host nation includes its number of stadiums, seating capacity of the stadiums, hotels, public transportation, and airport capacity. Some of the requirements include requiring the host nation to have at least twelve stadiums with a capacity of at least 40,000 spectators. The host nation must also be able to accommodate every participating country with a training ground to prepare for the games.
In addition to having the requisite number of stadia to host the event, the host nation must also have an airport that is capable of processing 1,450 passengers per hour. Representatives from FIFA’s selection committee also look to other infrastructure like public transportation and roadways to determine whether spectators have viable or efficient options to get to and from the stadiums on matchday.
FIFA also requires that a host country provide seventy-two base camp hotels for the teams and have another four hotels close to the stadiums, which is a logistical nightmare for underdeveloped countries because of the sheer volume of people and players occupying the country for a month. It also makes Qatar’s award of the World Cup even more controversial because the World Cup was awarded before the stadium, hotel, and airport requirements were fulfilled by Qatar. The cities, stadiums, hotels, and airports that you will see in Qatar did not exist at the time that the Gulf state was announced as the host country for the 2022 World Cup. The award of the World Cup to Qatar led to questions by the public and contributed to investigations uncovering years of corruption within the government of FIFA.
FIFA has long been in the spotlight for its corruption, bribery, and money laundering. But the true extent of how much corruption was hidden from the public came to light after FIFA awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar in 2010. The following four corruption scandals illustrate the lack of integrity in FIFA’s bidding process, all of which involved high-ranking FIFA members.
The first allegation of corruption relates to the 2022 World Cup bid given to Qatar when the bid was given to the small United Arab Emirates state of Qatar. The award of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar came as a shock to many parties due to high temperatures in the country, the lack of infrastructure, and Qatar’s national team never playing in the World Cup.
The World Cup typically takes place in early summer and is awarded to countries that already have established infrastructure. Qatar has a desert like climate where summer days can be up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit and are without the infrastructure necessary to hold an event of this magnitude. To allow Qatar to host the World Cup, the tournament was moved to the winter when it was still over eighty degrees. Qatar was also awarded the bid even though most of the infrastructure did not exist yet. Also interesting to note is that the Qatari national team has never qualified for the World Cup.
The alleged bid award corruption was centered around Mohamed Bin Hammam, who was a Qatari citizen and a former FIFA executive committee member. A report by The Sunday Times, alleged that Hammam made secret payments of up to five million dollars to high level FIFA officials to sway their votes for Qatar’s World Cup bid. Although charges were never filed against the federation due to lack of prosecutorial motivation, investigations are still ongoing to uncover the truth and the extent of corruption within the organization.
The second accusation of corruption within the hierarchy of FIFA became known at the conclusion of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. After the 2014 World Cup concluded, multiple FIFA executives left the country with luxury watches that were not declared at customs. Normally, customs would require these items to be accounted for, but the executives struck a deal with the Brazilian government to allow unrestricted import and export of otherwise restricted items during the lead-up to the World Cup, the duration of the World Cup, and shortly after its conclusion. This deal was likely done in an attempt to avoid the detection of any gifts to the selection committee when FIFA was visiting Brazil to determine whether the country could host the World Cup in 2014. This would not be the only accusation made against FIFA, and this accusation would cause multiple high-ranking officials within the organization to go to jail.
The third scandal also occurred at the conclusion of the 2014 World Cup. Corruption within FIFA and other organizations resulted in the arrest of multiple FIFA officials. One of the most notable arrests made after the 2014 World Cup in Rio was Match Executive Ray Whelan, who was arrested in connection with reselling hospitality packages at a premium. Hospitality packages offered guests match tickets and a variety of other services like catering, drinks, preferred parking, and other benefits for an added cost. These hospitality packages were supposed to be returned to FIFA to be given out to the public if not sold, but Whelan instead sold them to secondary ticketing companies like Jet Set Sports and Atlanta Sportif. At the end of the investigation, eleven FIFA officials were arrested, and the arrestees disclosed that they earned close to ninety-one million dollars per World Cup since the 1990s.
The final allegation that called for an investigation of FIFA came in the summer of 2015 and led to a major overhaul of the executive boards of the federation. In the summer of 2015, Swiss authorities arrested fourteen executives at the five-star Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich. Authorities stated that over $100 million in bribes were received and these activities spanned three decades, going back to the 1990s. Then-Vice President of the Federation and Head of the Concacaf, Jeffrey Webb, was among the executives arrested in Zurich.
The arrests of several executives in FIFA had a global impact and caused turmoil within the parties involved. As a result, many other executives in FIFA resigned from the positions to escape criminal charges. It was alleged that some of the kickbacks and bribes were offered by Russian and Qatari officials who were vying for the opportunity to host the World Cup in their respective countries. Although charges were never brought and both countries still hosted the World Cups, investigations are ongoing and have led to greater scrutiny against FIFA and have helped to shed light on the current situation in Qatar.
In 2010, Qatar won the bid to host the 2022 World Cup, beating the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. This outcome shocked people all over the world and was considered a “bad choice” by FIFA.
After its bid to host the World Cup was selected, Qatar initially set out to build five stadiums scheduled to be completed around 2018. Qatari construction contractors such as Midmac Contracting, Six Construct, Galfar Al Misnad, Salini Impregilo Group, and Cimolia were primarily awarded the contracts to build the stadiums. Not only were contractors required to erect the necessary stadiums for this event to take place, but, in some instances, entire cities needed to be erected. It is important to understand the procurement process of Qatar for the country to have made this event even remotely possible.
The Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (Committee), which is a government entity formed in 2011 in anticipation of hosting the World Cup, handled Qatar’s World Cup procurement process. The Central Tenders Committee, which administers tenders and bids, oversaw the venders and bids for World Cup infrastructure projects that companies wished to bid on, at the request of the government. This is where the procurement process begins.
Qatar’s procurement mimicked the sealed bidding process used in the United States. First, the specific government entity that sought to contract with a domestic or foreign company needed to prepare the necessary documentation for the contract, such as: what the project is, necessary instructions for the contractors, the procedure required for the implementation of the contract, and finally penalties associated with any breach of the provisions of said contract.
Following the necessary oversight done by the Qatari government, the government advertised their projects through publication in local newspapers within the country for domestic companies and the Internet for foreign businesses. This standard advertisement provided a brief statement describing the project and expectations of the government, what documents are required to bid on the contract, how the bid will be submitted, and a bid submission deadline. In addition to the submission of the bid, the Qatari government required that the bid be placed in Qatari currency unless it was stipulated otherwise in the documents presented to the public for bid. Bidders had to be sure that their bid was correct because bidders were unable to amend their bids once it was submitted to the government.
The Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy evaluated and awarded the contract to the winning bidder after bids were submitted. The Committee had the final say on which bid to award the contract to and therefore was not obligated to follow the government entity’s recommendation. In cases where the Committee disagreed with the government entity, a two-thirds majority of the committee members was required to select a different bidder. The committee’s decision was then presented to the Minister of Finance for approval, except for tenders exceeding fifty million Qatari riyals, which required approval from the Prime Minister of Qatar. Once the contractor was notified of their winning bid, they had ten days to submit a final guarantee of performance and sign a contract. This system of procurement employed by Qatari officials helps to explain why the World Cup required such a massive workforce.
To work in Qatar for the World Cup, migrant workers from around the globe had to abide by the regulations of the Kafala system. Failure to follow the rules of this system could result in jail.
The Kafala system, which was primarily implemented in the Middle East, created a relationship between foreign workers and their sponsor. The sponsor, known as the Kafeel, is typically the employer. The Kafala system allowed local companies in Qatar to grant sponsorship permits to hire migrant workers from various parts of the world, although they were predominantly from Asian countries such as Nepal. The sponsor covered the travel expenses of the workers and provided housing for them (typically dormitory style). Sponsors typically enlisted private recruiting firms to locate workers and initiate the process of preparing them to work in their respective home countries. The Kafala system, falling under the purview of Interior Ministries instead of labor ministries, left migrant workers without the protection of the country’s laws, as citizens of Qatar were. This was a dispositive factor in the denial of basic human rights to migrant workers.
The sponsors, who were primarily the employers, controlled the residency visas, which was a significant aspect of how the system was detrimental to migrant workers. Since the employers held the residency visas, only the employers could renew or terminate them. Employees needed their employer’s permission to terminate their employment, change jobs, or exit the host country. Employers were hesitant to relinquish this authority, and they frequently compelled employees to work on World Cup projects for a period longer than their visas permitted. Additionally, they frequently refused to allow their employees to depart the country due to the immense amount of work required for the tournament. Any employee who wanted to leave likely had no other option but to attempt to escape the Qatari workplace and return to their home country illegally. However, if caught, they risked losing their worker status and being imprisoned. They were forced to work on these projects until their employers allowed them to leave or until they died due to poor living conditions, heat exhaustion, or other causes, which were not disclosed by Qatar.
Ranjit Kumar Sah, a citizen of Nepal, was one of many people who migrated to Qatar in search of work. His story, like many others, recounts the days of hard work in the brutal desert heat, without breaks and often for much less money than initially negotiated. Ranjit Kumar Sah came to Qatar to make money to send back to his family, but instead spent almost ten years building a city from nothing in time for the World Cup.
For two years—the length of a typical contract—Sah worked as a construction worker. He carried bags of cement and rebar in the searing desert heat. Though the working day was set at eight hours, Sah and his colleagues frequently worked up to 12 in order to make more money. During the first ten months, Sah’s salary went to repaying a £750 loan taken out to pay a broker’s fee. Afterwards, he began sending money home to his family—the equivalent of about £124, nearly all of the £140 he earned most months. “It was a very hard job,” Sah recalls. The 23-year-old had returned to Dhanusha for his wedding and was hoping he could figure out a way to find a job at home to avoid going back to Qatar. “It was very hot in the daytime and very difficult to work.”
Many migrant workers like Ranjit faced similar fates at the hands of the Kafala system. Many countries across the Gulf have used migrant workers as their main source of labor because they lacked the necessary population of workers to make events at the magnitude of the World Cup feasible. Because Qatar’s population of citizens is small, migrant workers mainly from South Asia made up eighty-six percent of the population in Qatar, compared to just forty-nine percent across the rest of the Gulf. Due to the amount of people sent to Qatar, however, it has left both governments unable to keep up with human rights protections and combatting violations.
Many of these migrant workers were perceived as cheap and expendable laborers by employers who worked them to death. Aside from the long working hours, migrant workers worked on dangerous projects for which they had little or no construction experience. As a result, there were frequent construction injuries and fatalities while building Qatar’s World Cup stadiums and other infrastructure.
Ranjit Kumar Suh also referenced the dangers of working on these construction sites and some of the injuries he witnessed in his two years in Qatar. Ranjit Kumar Suh described:
At the construction site, the Qatari bosses treated the labourers—primarily men from South Asia—with disdain. “Since we were just labourers, they didn’t see us on good terms. They made us work non-stop with no break at all, so it was very difficult. . . . Accidents were common. One morning, Sah awoke to find his friend bleeding badly. Another broke his leg onsite. “Minor injuries were common. Myself, I got hurt too. Not a big accident, but you see a lot of people suffering.”
Ranjit’s experience is not an uncommon occurrence—many people have similar stories of friends or family that have perished by similar circumstances while working in Qatar for the World Cup.
Leading up to the Qatari World Cup, the Qatari government has officially acknowledged only three deaths caused by construction work, although the number of worker-related deaths differs depending on the statistics considered. This number is highly deflated, however, because it does not consider the number of migrant workers killed working on other infrastructure in the city unrelated to the stadiums which would not have been built but for the World Cup coming to Qatar. The number of deaths from the World Cup are still up for debate because the Qatari government does not routinely perform full autopsies on the deaths of these migrant workers.
Another statistic that is significantly deflated by the Qatari government is the number of deaths related to work on the country’s infrastructure, but which are not technically considered workplace accidents. Migrant workers in Qatar have suffered from heat exhaustion, kidney failure, and cardiac arrest due to extreme temperatures and long working hours without breaks. Despite this, Qatari doctors labeled seventy percent of the fatalities as natural deaths caused by acute cardiorespiratory failure because of inadequately performed autopsies. In 2014, DLA Piper released a report criticizing the Qatari government’s practice of autopsies and recommending that they allow for autopsies to be conducted or review postmortem cases in situations where the deaths of migrant workers were unexpected.
In 2022, a German documentary titled Qatar—World Cup of Shame was released a few months prior to the start of the 2022 World Cup. This documentary included interviews with Qatari physicians who admitted to being pressured to fill out death certificates without specifying the cause of death. One of the most widely reported numbers comes from The Guardian which lists the number of deaths at 6,751. This number comes from official statistics of countries that frequently sent migrant workers to Qatar. These countries included Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
When an estimated one million and two-hundred-thousand fans arrived in Qatar for the World Cup, many of them did not see where the migrant workers were housed. Qatar had done a fantastic job of lodging their migrant workers away from the World Cup as many of the workers were housed on the outskirts of the capital city of Doha.
More than 200,000 migrant men were housed in camp sites known as the Industrial Area, which were segregated from the rest of the city and resembled college dormitories. In these dilapidated structures, more than two dozen men were sometimes forced to share a room.
The buildings in which migrant workers lived also were not state of the art and tended to lack fundamental necessities like electricity, running water, and adequate ventilation. Temperature exceeded 120 degrees while nearly all migrant worker housing lacked air conditioning and proper ventilation, frequently leading its occupants to heat stroke. Worse yet, the migrant workers’ salaries usually paid for expenses like food, sub-par shelter, and (if they were lucky) healthcare.
In 2014, the conditions of these labor camps gained national media attention after the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) visited some of the labor camps in Qatar and reported on the horrendous living conditions that these men endured. While visiting one of the more desirable locations during their trip to Qatar, BBC reporter Leana Hosea described the conditions of the camps as squalid, detailing some of the things that she saw:
Some were better than others, but they were all overcrowded with around six to eight men to a room. Twenty and sometimes up to 40 men must share a kitchen, which is often just a few cooking hobs hooked up to gas canisters and nothing more. The toilet and washing facilities are so basic and dirty that some men use buckets of water to wash. One Bangladeshi man said that raw sewage had been leaking into the camp from a broken pipe.
This reporting helped show the world how poorly these men were being treated at the hands of oppressive employers and an unsympathetic government. These migrant men were being treated like slaves in Qatar and being forced to live in conditions not safe for animals let alone human beings. The system in place by the Qatari government allowed employers to profit off the abuse and the mistreatment of millions of migrant workers from all over the world.
Many of the migrant workers traveled to Qatar in search of decent wages so that they could send the money back to their families in poor countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, many of these workers were uneducated and unaware of the terms of their employment contracts that they signed when they became employees of these Qatari companies tasked with building infrastructure for the World Cup.
Employers in Qatar tended to hire independent hiring agencies to find workers, making getting a job difficult and expensive on its own due to the Kafala system. These hiring agencies recruited migrant workers from poor countries and charged fees ranging from three to four thousand dollars for Bangladeshi citizens and from one thousand to one thousand five hundred dollars for citizens of Nepal. Once the fees were paid, the migrant workers were provided with a job and a ticket to Qatar to begin working. Although the typical contracts of these workers included pay and other benefits, they were rarely accurate. Employers frequently denied the benefits promised in these contracts and tended to pay late, if at all.
In addition, upon their arrival in Qatar, many migrant workers were forced to give their passports to their employers and would rarely receive them back, preventing them from leaving the country. A journalist described the situation of a typical migrant worker from Bangladesh who paid his recruitment fee to these recruiters before arriving in Qatar:
You’re not working as a clerk in an office, you’re building a football stadium. They’re not quite sure who told you the $400 a month figure, but it’s actually going to be $200, less miscellaneous costs. The recruitment fee isn’t $200 as you’d agreed, but $2000, plus the cost of your flight to Qatar. Your crisp new passport is confiscated. You cannot quit your job. You cannot leave the country. And before you have even clocked in for your first shift, you owe your employer the equivalent of two years’ wages. And so quite suddenly, you are plunged into a bewildering world of alienation and exploitation, long hours and back-breaking toil in baking heat. Twelve hours a day, six days a week. At night, you sleep on a filthy bunk bed. At least your wages are getting paid on time. You’re one of the lucky ones. Talking to other migrant workers in one of the many makeshift camps dotted around the outskirts of Doha, you find others who are having money withheld for two, three, sometimes even six months.
Sadly, this was the fate of many migrant workers who looked to make a better life for themselves and to send money back to their loved ones.
On January 16, 2020, the Ministry of the Interior announced that it would institute new reforms to the current Kafala system in place for migrant workers performing work on the infrastructure for the World Cup. Ministerial Decision No. 95 was the latest piece of legislation intended to reform the Kafala system. This law lifted the exit permit requirements for nearly all the non-Qatari labor population, allowing migrant workers to enter and exit the country on a temporary or permanent basis without requiring approval from their employer. At the time, this decision was hailed as the end of the Kafala system by many people, but this was not true.
Although granting migrant workers the opportunity to leave the country on a temporary or permanent basis was a big step in the reform of the Kafala system, it did not fix all the problems faced by this system of labor procurement. As an initial matter, employers in many respects were still not allowing these migrant workers to leave the jobs and, if they tried, would be subject to much harsher abuse than they had originally dealt with prior to leaving the job. Many workers still in Qatar were still suffering from many human rights violations like poor living conditions, unfair pay, and employer abuse.
Another issue with this system and the alleged reforms was that migrant workers often took out loans to get these jobs and had no money to be able to travel back to their home countries. As a result, their new law only appeared to implement reforms when, in reality, no major changes to the system were implemented by the Qatari government. While some positives still resulted from recent laws passed by the Qatari government, the migrant workers who were forced to build the infrastructure to allow for this monumental event in the Middle East still had much work to be done.
FIFA is a nonprofit organization founded in 1904 in Paris, France to organize and oversee the competition of soccer between Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. As a nonprofit organization, it is important to understand FIFA’s source of funds, which comes from its approximately one and a half billion dollars account, mostly reinvests into the development of the game. FIFA’s primary income source is the World Cup, from which it earns enough money from selling media rights to broadcast matches on various television stations in addition to sponsorship agreements with many global corporations.
FIFA is run like the United States government because it has a Congress with several committees and subcommittees to address certain issues like financing and new technology, such as video assistance referee. FIFA also has representatives of different countries to vote on new laws or regulations, and a president selected by vote by the members of this Congress. Some of the committees of FIFA are the Ethics Committee, Disciplinary Committee, and the Finance Committee.
When looking at the size and influence that it has on the world, one must wonder what gives FIFA its authority over the entire soccer world. FIFA was created based on the belief by multiple European countries that an international governing body for the sport was needed. Little by little, FIFA began to expand into the West with countries like Argentina, Brazil, and the United States.
FIFA is not the only organization responsible for the laws of the game, however. The rules of gameplay of the sport of soccer are governed by the International Football Relations Board (IFRB). In contrast, FIFA handles the planning and development of tournaments, such as the World Cup.
The reason FIFA is so powerful is because member nations rely on FIFA to play in world tournaments. FIFA is made up of 211 countries, making it the largest governing body in the world. Because of the number of nations that joined FIFA, the world’s reliance on the governing body makes it difficult to singlehandedly institute change. The federation has become so consumed by its own power that one of the only ways that change can occur within the hierarchy of government of FIFA would be for large countries such as the United States, Spain, Germany, Brazil, and/or Russia to disassociate from it. If some of the countries with the most influence around the world left the federation and created another governing power over the soccer world, FIFA would arguably have to listen to their demands and make serious changes to avoid the issues that occurred in Qatar leading up to the World Cup. However, this change is unlikely to happen because countries fear that leaving FIFA will have disastrous results for the sport of soccer in their country and will keep them out of major tournaments like the World Cup.
For real change to occur in the soccer world, there needs to be an independent governing body that holds FIFA accountable for their corruption, their turning a blind eye to human rights atrocities in World Cup bid winning countries, and punishments for the members of FIFA that are openly involved in these events.
To limit the tragedies that occurred in Qatar leading up to the World Cup and in subsequent World Cups, an independent governing body must be in place whose principal duty is oversight and investigation into the host country to determine whether its procurement practices are negatively affecting the lives of their workers tasked with preparing for the World Cup. By implementing this independent governing body, it will force host countries to hold the companies that they employ to practice better treatment of their employees because, if not, it could lead to suspension from future tournaments and could also stop them from hosting future World Cups. For this independent governing body to exist, it will require commitment from the member nations of FIFA to work in tandem with the United Nations and provide financial support to this project.
Soccer will never truly be considered “the beautiful game” until all the ugliness caused by injustice has been wiped out by FIFA. Creating a new international group to protect those who cannot protect themselves and hold not only the countries but the executives of FIFA accountable for their actions due to the issues surrounding FIFA’s ability to protect human rights and the long history of corruption within the federation. The committee needs to create a framework based on recognized organizations like the United Nations Guiding Principles. This framework should establish an independent organization connected to FIFA but not under its umbrella to avoid corruption scandals that have plagued the international soccer governing body.
FIFA must adopt certain principles to build the independent governing body with a focus on limiting human rights abuses that have been prevalent in the procurement process of countries selected to host the World Cup. This will create a visible framework in place to give this organization rigidity. By adopting a set of principles from the UN’s existing laws, countries that are members of the United Nations should have no problem with these principles. The building blocks of this committee would be to adopt the three pillars of the United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGP) on Human Rights: the state’s duty to respect, corporate responsibility to respect, and victims’ access to effective remedy.
The first pillar is the state’s duty to protect the workers. This pillar provides recommendations for countries with existing human rights obligations to work towards meeting these already established goals to eliminate employers’ abuse of their workers. This pillar creates an environment where the highest priority is protecting workers’ rights.
In practice, this pillar would make it the duty of the World Cup bidding country to create more stringent laws to protect the rights of migrant workers. By way of example, Qatar’s procurement practices contributed to migrant worker abuses because no laws were in place to protect migrant workers from abuse by their employers. Adoption of this pillar would put the burden on Qatar because it requires the country to be more involved in protecting the lives of migrant workers and monitor the business’s treatment of these workers. Monitoring employers’ employment practices would help to limit the workers’ rights abuses suffered by migrant workers because more emphasis would be put on the fair treatment of migrant workers and would require the country to be more involved in their employer’s employment practices. This governing body would also require Qatar to evaluate a corporation’s history of treatment to its workers and use that as a deciding factor in giving the company a contract. Continued government involvement in the procurement process after migrant workers come to prospective World Cup host countries in search of work would help to decrease human rights violations because companies would be more likely to act ethically towards their workers or face being blacklisted from future projects, thus causing the companies to lose money.
The second pillar is the corporate responsibility to respect the workers. This pillar provides businesses with a framework to prevent and, if necessary, halt the negative impacts on the rights of workers. The framework is comprised of eight elements to guide these businesses and prevent human rights violations. The eight elements are the following: commit, embed, assess, act, track, communicate, engage, and remediate. These elements, used in conjunction with the first pillar, can help to stop human rights violations by both businesses and countries through holding the host country accountable for abuse of migrant workers, which would force the host countries to pay more attention to how their contractors are treating their workers and make laws to stop these violations.
The second pillar is important to help end human rights violations in procurement. These corporations looking to do business with the government would be subject to investigation upon submitting a bid to determine whether they have violated human rights laws in the past. The second pillar forces the corporation to demonstrate that it is being ethical in the treatment of its workers. Allowing an oversight board to investigate these companies gives the oversight board to power to reject whether a company can be awarded a bid and if the country that has allowed this company to work on a project can be punished as well. The second pillar gives companies looking to bid on government contracts incentives to treat employees better and end these human rights violations because it could limit not only the amount of business that they can do in the host country but also the company’s profits. By alienating businesses with a previous history of human rights violations, it allows procurement of government contracts to be conducted in a more ethical manner with respect to the rights of the workers that migrate to the country in search of work.
The final pillar is the victim’s access to effective remedy. The third pillar states that, even if countries and businesses try their hardest to implement the guiding principles outlined by the UN, negative effects on human rights may still result. When this occurs, the affected parties deserve the right to seek redress through both the judicial system and other non-judicial systems to file their grievances. This pillar was written so that the parties affected by these human rights violations can receive some form of compensation for their pain and suffering. Together, these pillars protect the worker who is unable to protect himself.
Although it is almost impossible to prevent all human rights violations, the first two pillars aim to limit their occurrence. Furthermore, the third pillar establishes a channel for victims of human rights violations to seek compensation for their injuries. In practice, the host country would partner with this newly created independent board to host an arbitration to determine what redress should be considered for the injured party. Here, the new independent board would act as the arbiter and help to create a fair outcome for both sides. The board would be obligated to ensure transparency and honesty regarding the alleged violation by examining the country in which the violation occurred. After the board’s investigation took place, the board would decide guilt and determine the punishment for the country, or the businesses involved. However, acceptance of responsibility and a reasonable award to the injured party would help to show good faith and help avoid any penalties on the host country. This final pillar is a place for the host country to take responsibility for its wrongdoing and continue to work towards ending human rights violations. By working towards eliminating the violation of human rights in their procurement process, the countries set to host the World Cup help to create a more ethical tournament for all parties to enjoy.
The principles underlying the UNGP could serve as an excellent basis for the independent committee of FIFA. Specifically, the pillars could provide a valuable framework for the independent committee, given that it comprises elected UN officials who are part of the World Cup site selection committee.
For this independent committee to function, it would require the appointment of members of the United Nations to be impartial officials to determine whether human rights violations occurred and what punishments would be given to the parties involved. These UN officials would be appointed for a single term of ten years to oversee the length of the process from choosing the location and monitoring the progress up until the games conclude. In addition, this committee would be tasked with unannounced visits to the host country’s World Cup site to oversee the treatment of the workers. This process would benefit the workers because it would allow the independent body to visit World Cup sites, it would create a better system for monitoring progress for the event, and it would allow the committee to vote on sanctions if any of the pillars are violated. This would not only hold the host country and the businesses responsible for violations of human rights in contract procurement, but it would also help to decrease the amount of corruption within FIFA because it would stop backroom deals from being made.
Some proposed sanctions may include fines, suspending the home team from competing, and banning a country from hosting the games in the future. By appointing UN officials to this committee, it would prevent executives within the organization from using their power to determine locations for the event based on which location could benefit the executives the most. This, in theory, would help to eliminate many of the migrant worker abuses that occurred wake of the award of the World Cup to Qatar. To keep up with the various infrastructure projects that needed to be completed before the World Cup in 2022, Qatar rapidly searched and accepted bids from companies and became unable to monitor the activities of the employers, allowing the employers to commit atrocities on their migrant employees. Creating this independent body would allow for a third party to monitor the treatment of migrant workers in World Cup host countries to help limit abuses like those that occurred in Qatar. The United Nations can achieve these goals through both intervening in the country to stop these human rights violations or imposing sanctions on them as punishment for continued abuse of their workers.
Although the use of an independent governing body is a good idea, in theory many things would have to happen for such an entity to exist. For this idea to become a reality, this independent governing body would require the larger countries in FIFA to petition for this committee to become part of FIFA.
It is important to get the larger countries on board because of their influence on the world and on the sport. If politically influential countries such as England, Spain, and the United States—in addition to frequent World Cup winners such as Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico—decided to leave FIFA because of FIFA’s decision not to create an independent oversight committee, FIFA would lose credibility and money. By exerting their influence over the world, these countries could change internal controls in FIFA.
To facilitate the establishment of this committee, countries could provide financial assistance to support its implementation. If FIFA’s member countries have a stake in this committee, they will be more interested in its operation. By having a financial interest in this committee, member nations will look to limit corruption in FIFA to ensure that every member nation will have an equal opportunity to host the World Cup. These countries banning together to inspire change and create an emphasis on the importance of human rights would do a lot for the world and help to limit the corruption and protect migrant workers unlike in previous World Cups.
Adopting an independent committee capable of investigating host countries and protecting the lives of workers contracted to create the necessary infrastructure for hosting one of the world’s largest sporting events would significantly reduce host countries’ ability to exploit migrant workers. If host countries were better monitored in their procurement habits for the World Cup, the atrocities that occurred in Qatar and the preceding World Cups would have never occurred—at least not at the same scale. By creating an independent committee with the task of protecting those who cannot protect themselves, this solution would seek to avoid the issues that have plagued the soccer community and can help to make soccer the beautiful game that it once was.
