It might not be a small undertaking if Vermont announced that, in the following decade, it will construct seven stadiums and overhaul its infrastructure to host one among the world’s largest international sporting events.
Yet Qatar, with about half the residents and half the land of Vermont, has spent the last decade preparing to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the primary country within the Arab world to achieve this. To make the event possible, Qatar relied heavily on migrant staff, who human rights groups accuse the country of abusing.
Since Qatar was awarded the World Cup in 2010, its labor force has increased by about 1 million staff. By 2021, migrants made up over 95% of the country’s labor force.
In 2019, the Arab states had the very best percentage of migrant staff in its labor force of any subregion, at 41%. FIFA’s alternative to host the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which some allege was influenced by bribes, has been controversial partially as a consequence of concerns about forced labor and human trafficking.
While Qatar claims to have abolished elements of the kafala system, a system of labor sponsorship where employers can control and regulate the lives of foreign laborers they employ, human rights groups say much of that system still lingers, albeit informally. The kafala system is basically related to forced labor and poor working conditions, and sometimes includes policies reminiscent of passport confiscation by employers, predatory recruitment fees and poor living conditions. Subsequently, migrants face significant barriers when they struggle to depart the country or leave a job to which they’re financially indebted, and have trouble arguing for health care, time without work or higher working conditions.
Some countries within the Arab world still have elements of the kafala system. The system, in line with the Council on Foreign Relations, “applies to just about all foreigners working in a kafala host country, comprising all nationalities, economic classes, and professions.” Within the Arab states, a majority of those staff come from South Asia and Africa.
Experts and human rights groups have argued that the kafala system makes migrant staff more vulnerable to human trafficking, which the U.S. government defines because the “use of force, fraud, or coercion to acquire some style of labor or industrial sex act.”
Every year, the U.S. State Department releases a Trafficking in Individuals Report that puts countries into tiers based on their government’s efforts to eliminate human trafficking. Countries in Tier 1 have adequate policies in place to curb human trafficking, Tier 2 countries don’t yet have adequate policies in place but are working to adopt those policies and countries in Tier 3 don’t have sufficient policies and aren’t making progress. (The Tier 2 Watchlist is for nations at risk of falling into Tier 3.)
Several countries within the Arab region have struggled with their human trafficking policies for years, in line with the report. Syria, for instance, has been designated Tier 3 for greater than a decade. Saudi Arabia, which is making a bid for the 2030 World Cup, improved to Tier 2 in 2021, before which it was designated either Tier 2 Watchlist or Tier 3. Qatar is currently designated Tier 2, having slowly improved its rating for the reason that early 2000s.
Many hope that the highlight delivered to the region as a consequence of the World Cup will affect long-lasting change to labor laws and migrant rights, but others are skeptical.
“I can’t help but wonder what’s in store for migrant staff after the World Cup,” Malcolm Bidali, a Kenyan security guard who was detained by Qataris in 2021 after anonymously blogging about employee rights, wrote recently for a rights group.
“If staff still live in horrible conditions, if staff still go months without pay, if staff still can’t freely change jobs, if domestic staff still can’t get justice, what happens when nobody’s looking?”
