Qatar’s selection to host this year’s FIFA World Cup brought cheers to the streets of Doha in celebration of the first edition of the tournament to be held in the Arab world.
But the selection, made in 2010, also drew immediate criticism — over the logistics of hosting the Games in a country where summer temperatures routinely top 100 degrees; Alleged bribery and corruption among FIFA officials who voted for Qatar; and concerns about human rights abuses that have continued in the years since.
Now, with the World Cup just days away, the Gulf nation is expecting an influx of more than a million fans. And billions more will tune in to watch the tournament’s 64 matches. However, the disputes have not subsided.
Recently, the former head of FIFA also called the selection of Qatar a mistake.
“It was a bad choice. And I was responsible for it as president at the time,” said Sepp Blatter, whose tenure as FIFA administrator ended in 2015 amid a bribery scandal.
Lack of infrastructure and death of migrant workers
Qatar is the smallest nation to host the World Cup, a complex international sporting event that attracts large numbers of visitors and requires infrastructure to accommodate them.
At only 4,471 square miles, Qatar is about 20% smaller than the state of Connecticut. Most of the country is a barren sandy plain, and its 2.8 million inhabitants live in the area around the capital, Doha.
At the time of qualifying in 2010, Qatar lacked many of the stadiums, hotels, and highways needed to host the tournament. To build them, the country turned to its vast population of migrant workers, who make up 90% or more of its labor force. (Of Qatar’s residents, only about 300,000 are Qatari nationals. Many more are migrant workers whose visas are tied to their employment, as is common in the Middle East.)
Working and living conditions for those migrant workers were often exploitative and dangerous. A 2021 investigation by the Guardian found that since 2010, more than 6,500 migrant workers from 5 South Asian countries have died in Qatar from workplace accidents, car crashes, suicides, and heatstroke, among other causes.
“Some of them are workers who died after they were evacuated from the stadium construction site after collapsing. Some died in road accidents on their way to work on company buses. And many others died suddenly in unexplained labor camps,” said Pete Pattison, one of the reporters on the investigation, with NPR. In an interview last year.
FIFA and Qatar dispute the figure. Qatar said only three people died as a direct result of work on World Cup construction sites and admitted 37 workers died.
Qatar also frames the World Cup as an “incredible opportunity to raise welfare standards,” and officials say workers’ conditions have improved since the tournament: In 2014, the country introduced a set of worker welfare standards that created new safeguards (though advocates say the new rules are always are not applicable).
In May, a coalition of human rights groups called on FIFA and Qatar to create a reparation fund — a pool of money that could be used to compensate migrant workers, along with families of the dead, for the abuses they endured while building stadiums and others. The necessary infrastructure for the World Cup.
The fund, they say, should not total less than $440 million—the equivalent of World Cup prize money.
“We believe players don’t want to play in stadiums that workers died to build. We believe fans don’t want to stay in hotels or use metros that workers died to build,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives. Human Rights Watch, is one of the organizations calling for funding.
Other human rights violations
Concerns about human rights violations go beyond the treatment of migrant workers. “In a word, the human rights situation in Qatar is bad,” Worden told NPR.
This week, Human Rights Watch urged journalists to look beyond football, publishing a 42-page report describing “the many human rights concerns surrounding Qatar’s preparations for the 2022 World Cup.”
Qatar’s Penal Code criminalizes sex outside of marriage, so rape victims are prosecuted. And homosexuality is effectively criminalized: sex between men is punishable by up to seven years in prison, and men who “incite” or “incite” another man to commit an “act of sodomy or immorality” can face one to three years in prison.
In a recent interview with a German broadcaster, the Qatari ambassador to the World Cup described homosexuality as “psychological damage”.
“The most important thing is that everyone will accept that they are here. But they will have to obey our rules,” said Ambassador Khalid Salman, a former Qatari national team player. The comments were widely condemned by Western officials, including the US State Department.
Advocates say LGBTQ people in Qatar face conversion therapy, harassment by authorities, and prison terms.
“The fear is so real,” Dr. said Nasser Mohammed, who grew up in an ultra-conservative Qatari community and applied for asylum in the US fearing reprisals for his sexuality.
The Qatari embassy said in a statement to NPR that “the safety of all visitors is of the utmost importance” to the host country and that Qatar is a “relatively conservative society.”
“Everyone is welcome to Qatar for the World Cup,” the statement said. “We urge all visitors to appreciate and respect our culture, just as they would if they were traveling in the region and other parts of the world.”
Allegations of bribery and corruption
The selection of Qatar as the host of the World Cup has long been accused of bribery and corruption.
The selection was announced in 2010 after a series of votes by FIFA officials. Qatar has won the proposal of America, South Korea, Japan, and Australia.
Over the years, various officials from FIFA and other organizations have been accused of accepting or demanding bribes to host the World Cup in Qatar.
“There are so many allegations of corruption against the Qatari bid – political intrigue going on, in terms of government contracts, gas deals between countries that will vote on who will host the World Cup final,” said James Montague. A journalist who has written about Qatar and the World Cup speaking in an interview with NPR’s Throughline.
About a dozen FIFA officials involved in the selection have been banned from the organization – including its former president Blatter – or indicted on corruption charges. In 2019, French football great and former head of European football Michel Platini was arrested during an investigation into a $2 million payment linked to his bid to bring the World Cup to Qatar. Both Blatter and Platini have denied wrongdoing.
A 2014 FIFA investigation cleared Qatari officials of any wrongdoing, allowing the tournament to go ahead.
The November schedule has stressed many players
The World Cup is traditionally held in the summer. But Qatar’s summer heat and humidity made that impossible, and the event was rescheduled for November. (Games will also be played in an air-conditioned stadium.)
The timing has caused major disruptions in professional soccer, particularly in Europe, where most league programs typically run from late summer to the following spring. Top professional leagues such as England’s Premier League, Germany’s Bundesliga, and Spain’s La Liga have announced a two-month break to accommodate the World Cup.
That tight schedule has caused “unprecedented workload demands” on players, according to a new report by FIFPRO, the union representing 65,000 players worldwide.
For a typical summer World Cup, Premier League players have historically had an average of 31 days to prepare and 37 days to recover, the report found. This year, preparation and recovery times have dropped to seven and eight days, the association says.
“Overlapping tournaments, consecutive back-to-back matches, extreme weather conditions, a compressed preparation period, and inadequate recovery time together pose an ominous threat to the health and performance of players,” the report says.
Players taking part in the Cup will face a “really high risk” of injury, said Darren Burgess, FIFPro consultant, and exercise scientist.