Qatar rapped for poor human rights record

TDT | Doha     

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Staff Reporter

In the run-up to the start of the 2022 World Cup in November, global attention has again focused on the poor human rights record of the host country, Qatar.

A new report from Amnesty International (AI) draws attention to the plight of migrant workers, employed to build the stadiums, hotels and other infrastructure for the tournament.

According to AI, since 2010 hundreds of thousands of these workers have faced abuse in Qatar, including facing unsafe working conditions and lack of compensation for injury or death, and being unable to change jobs or leave the country without the agreement of their employer.

AI says that labour reforms which Qatar introduced in 2018 to improve the rights of these workers have not been enforced and cover only a small number of migrant workers in the country. AI’s new report publicly criticises both Qatar and football’s governing body Fifa for failing to remedy the ongoing abuse of migrant workers in Qatar.

The human rights organisation accuses Fifa of failing to take into consideration abuse of workers’ rights when it evaluated Qatar’s bid for the 2022 World Cup. It accuses both Qatar and Fifa of doing too little too late to tackle the problem and urges them now to put in place a comprehensive programme to remedy past abuses.

This would include compensation for relatives of those killed on building sites, and reimbursing the illegal recruitment fees paid by thousands of workers to obtain jobs in Qatar.

“By turning a blind eye to foreseeable human rights abuses and failing to stop them, Fifa indisputably contributed to the widespread abuse of migrant workers involved in World Cup-related projects in Qatar,” declared AI Secretary General Agnes Callamard.