was awarded in 2010. These include thousands of unexplained deaths and injuries, wage theft, and
exorbitant recruitment fees. Human Rights Watch has opened a global campaign, #PayUpFIFA, to
support this coalition call. Amnesty International is releasing a report, “Predictable and Preventable,”
setting out how FIFA and Qatar can remedy 12 years of abuses.
“FIFA and Qatar have failed migrant workers, who have been essential for the 2022 World Cup, but they
can still provide compensation to those seriously harmed and the families of the many who died,” said
Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch. “FIFA should immediately set aside
the funds needed to provide an adequate remedy and avoid the legacy of a ‘World Cup of Shame.’”
Over the last decade, human rights groups have repeatedly documented the widespread abuses workers
face under Qatar’s kafala (sponsorship) system, which can give rise to forced labor. This is despite labor
reforms that Qatari authorities have introduced in recent years in response to a forced labor complaint
before the International Labour Organization. As recently as March, Human Rights Watch documented
wage theft for up to five months at a prominent Qatari trading and construction firm with FIFA-related
projects.
When workers engaged in stadium-related projects that are held to higher global scrutiny and standards
do not have adequate protections, workers outside stadium-related projects are unsurprisingly prone to
greater abuses. Moreover, Qatar’s poor human rights record creates other serious concerns, including
severe restrictions on free expression and peaceful assembly, state policies that discriminate and facilitate
violence against women, and a repressive environment against LGBT residents and visitors.
When FIFA, the global football governing body, awarded the 2022 tournament to Qatar, it knew or should
have known that the migrant workers building the massive infrastructure would face grave risks to their
human rights. Yet FIFA neither imposed labor rights conditions nor undertook effective human rights
due diligence, Human Rights Watch said.
For Manju Devi, a 38-year-old Nepali woman whose 40-year-old migrant worker husband, Kripal Mandal,
died in Qatar in 2022, the only “legacy” of the upcoming World Cup is the outstanding loans her husband
took out to pay for the job that he died doing. Like most migrant workers in Qatar, Mandal had borrowed
money at exorbitant rates to pay recruitment fees, a debt that continues to increase. While Qatar
prohibits charging migrant workers recruitment fees and related costs, the government rarely enforces
this regulation.
Mandal’s family said that he worked in construction for a supply company that assigned him to the
airport and stadiums. His wife is still grappling to comprehend his death from a heart attack. “I cannot
say what the reason behind his death is,” Devi told Human Rights Watch. “Whether it is the cause they
reported or something else, we cannot tell … In the evening he was talking properly and laughing, … but
he died at around 3 a.m. the next morning.”