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Next week, the international football organization, FIFA, is set to confirm Saudi Arabia as host of the 2034 Men’s World Cup.
They’ll do this regardless of the country’s appalling human rights record. FIFA did not require proper human rights due diligence nor enforce binding commitments to prevent labor and other abuses.
Labor abuses are very much a key concern here, in particular, because over the next ten years, there is going to be an enormous amount of construction to make the 2034 Men’s World Cup happen.
The Saudi bid submitted to FIFA outlined the country’s intention to build 11 new stadiums and refurbish four others. It anticipates the need for more than 185,000 new hotel rooms, as well as significantly expanding airport, road, rail, and bus networks.
Migrant workers will be the ones doing the building. There are currently 13.4 millionmigrant workers in Saudi Arabia – including from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. This number is expected to increase significantly with World Cup projects and other huge building efforts in the country.
Saudi Arabia has a long, grim record of treating migrant workers badly, and a new Human Rights Watch report has documented widespread abuses against them Some of these abuses may amount to situations of forced labor.
The abuses start from the time companies recruit workers: they often illegally force them to pay outrageously high recruitment fees. Once in Saudi Arabia, migrant workers then often face employers who violate employment contracts.
Sometimes, it’s just plain wage theft. Employers simply don’t pay people for their work or pay them less than was agreed.
In addition, working conditions at job sites are often dangerous, including extreme heat for outdoor workers. Abuses linked to extreme heat can cause lasting and potentially lethal health harms, including organ failure.
According to Bangladeshi government data, 884 Bangladeshis died in Saudi Arabia between January and July this year. Eighty percent of the deaths were attributed to “natural causes.”
Many migrant worker deaths in Saudi Arabia are unexplained and uninvestigated. Many are also uncompensated, leaving families of deceased migrant workers without financial support.
These kinds of labor abuses in Saudi Arabia have been well known for years. Before they accepted the Saudi bid for the Men’s 2034 World Cup, FIFA could have demanded that Saudi officials address these abuses and fix glaring gaps in their existing labor laws.
FIFA failed to do so, and as the new HRW report highlights, Saudi authorities are systematically failing to protect workers from these abuses or remedy them.
