And so that’s it. After all the excitement, the heart wrenching moments, the blood, the sweat, the tears – it’s over and quickly fading into the distance. It gave us some good times didn’t it? We all came together for a change to support our boys as they battled against the best of the best. I’m sure we feel like we all needed it, after a year in which every piece of news has felt like yet another shovel of dung upon a never ending pile of excrement. But were the cheers, the beers and the tears really worth Qatar 2022’s dark underbelly?
I’m sure you’ve heard it before, or some version at least. Qatar 2022 was hardly perfect, from a moral and an environmental side, but it seems many of us have elected to overlook the dark in favour of “the game” ‘s blinding light. After all, some of us seem to tell ourselves, it’s not the players who are at fault, it’s the shady people in the Qatari government right? And after all, we have to respect cultural differences when it comes to the basic human rights of the population? Never mind the claims of modern slavery, the crippling cost to our ozone layer, let’s just follow the example set by FIFA: we must “focus on football”, the sport should not “hand out moral lessons”.
And that’s the problem, our complacency is just the thing that allows so many to tear through that dream of a liveable future. Equality? Forget about it. A world that isn’t choked by noxious gasses, unbearably hot, dry, arid: a place we could never proudly call home. That is a dream of the past. If we let those who enable oppression to continue, in that enabling of oppression, then we are no better them. And I’m not just talking about Qatari officials, I’m talking about FIFA. The organization that facilitates the oppression of others to continue. But what have they done, these big bad villains of the Federation International de Football? Whilst they might not be the perpetrators of the issues with the World Cup, they have brushed over them, made an example to the world that: modern slavery? That’s ok don’t worry about it. Persecution of LBBTQIA+ people, not a problem.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s look at the facts. We’ll start with the human cost of building the stadia of the World Cup in Qatar has wrought and the claims of modern slavery that have come from this.
Claims of Modern Slavery
What we know is this: 30,000 foreign laborers were hired to build these stadia, primarily from the countries of India, Nepal, Bangladesh and the Philippines. According to a report by The Guardian in 2021, 6,500 migrant workers have died since Qatar won its bid to host the World Cup. Now Qatar responded to this saying this fails to represent solely those who worked on projects related to the World Cup and that these deaths had taken place over several years. Qatar went on to say that accident records proved only 37 deaths related to the world cup and of these 3 were directly work related.
The problem with this is that “occupational diseases” that would have been included in this report do not included death from heat stress. These figures also do not include workers who had died off the “footprint of the stadium”. As was brought to light by a Daily Mail report from 2011 to 2020, 2,823 “foreigners of working age” had died of “unclassified reasons”. Qatar has been further challenged by various humanitarian organizations. For example, The International Labor Organization (ILO), which used figures from government run Qatari hospitals and ambulances that showed in 2021 alone, 50 had died, 500 had been seriously injured and 37,600 were mildly injured. The bottom line is this, working in such hot conditions as high as 30 degrees in some cases cannot be good in such a labor intensive job as working on construction sights. And that’s not including the potential deaths from machinery.
The living conditions in general for these migrant workers are no better than these uncertain death rates. In 2016, Amnesty International accused Qatari companies of forced labor. The accusations included: reports of squalid living conditions, wages that had been withheld and passports that had been confiscated. All of which point to an emergence of mass scale modern slavery. There is almost undeniable reasoning that this world cup, has been built on the backs of slaves. Built upon the skeletons of slaves. And we seem happy to remain oblivious to the wrongness of it all.
But surely we cannot just base such strong assumptions upon one study? Lets bring out another example, let’s shout this abomination of human rights even louder for the people in the back. In 2021 The Human Rights Watch released a study claiming workers faced “months of unpaid wages for long hours of gruelling work”. And what has been done to protect these workers, who, by the way, themselves in an interview for The Worker’s Cup have described their situation to be “modern slavery”? Well actually Qatar has released reforms such as a wage protection scheme dedicated to delivering all workers on time wages. The problem is, as explained eloquently by a government spokesperson to the BBC, the “number of rule-breaking companies will continue to decline as enforcement measures take hold”. In other words, whilst on paper it looks like Qatar care about their workers, in reality they have done very little to address the claims of modern slavery they have been bombarded with.
But all that might seem so very far away to many of you. It’s not happening here, it’s happening far across the world, in a country most of us had never heard of until recently. It’s so disgustingly easy to forget, to ignore what does not impact us. We do not feel it. We do not see it. So is it so hard to convince ourselves it isn’t really there? This is where we come back to FIFA. Because FIFA have allowed us to forget. FIFA have hardly addressed this, FIFA have brushed over this. FIFA have forgotten. They have set the bar, they have proved to the world you don’t have to care.
LGBTQIA+ Rights
Let’s try something closer to home then. If we want to consider the human cost, the moral cost, of these games we need look no further than Qatar’s policies on LGBTQIA+ communities. To the direct moral threats to the fans. It is illegal under Article 296 of Qatar’s Penal Code to engage in same-sex sexual activity. You can go to prison for 3-7 years. And it is legal. It is legal to execute an offender of this code under Sharia law. Same sex couples have no legal protection or recognition. Citizens can change their name but not their gender markers. Qatar can deport or simply bar from entry anyone they want to, on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. And despite Major General Abdulaziz Al Ansari’s reported statement that LGBTQIA+ people “would be welcome at the World Cup”, former Qatari international Khalid Salman described homosexuality as a “damage in the mind”. A transgender woman reported that she had been attacked by an officer in Qatar whilst stating “you gays are immoral, so we will be the same to you”. Even the tiny action of solidarity by the England team of wearing rainbow armbands was flawed by Qatar with the team being told that they would be yellow-carded the second they stepped on the pitch with what must clearly be abominations of colourful fabric. So whilst members of the LGBTQIA+ community were technically allowed into the country for the games, they did so at risk and to the horrific knowledge that in any other circumstance, they would be prosecuted and perhaps even killed for the simple crime of existence.
This is tricky to navigate however. Respect for other countries’ values is a must – obviously. Celebration of cultural difference is a wonderful thing. But I think, a line can easily be drawn in the sand when those cultural values infringe upon the basic human rights of individuals. We must protect difference certainly, but before that, we must protect quality of life and the ability for anybody to live without fear of persecution – fear of death even – for their sexuality or the way they chose to identify themselves.
The Environmental Cost
And then, of course as everything seems to nowadays, we come to environmental cost. There were 1.2 million fans expected to travel Qatar for the world cup, that’s thousands of ozone destroying, CO2 spitting, long-haul flights. Not to mention the carbon cost of pumping out so much cold air to keep the fans at a comfortable 17 degrees, the resources and fuel used to build all the stadia. This is once again very easy to brush over and explain away when focusing just on pledges made by Qatar and FIFA.
The world cup was estimated to cost 3.6 million carbon credits (one credit representing one ton of CO2) in order for it to become carbon neutral. Qatar pledged to pay for 1.8 million and FIFA the rest. Again on the face of it, not so bad at all. They’re going to buy the credits, they’re doing they’re bit what’s the problem? Where is this sketchiness you seem so adamant for us to see in FIFA’s handling of the world cup, Lucy? The problem lies in the way the environmental cost is being regulated and monitored. The World Cup organization created the GCC (global carbon council) to regulate the World Cup’s environmental impact however this is an independent body so it is not forced to adhere to bodies such as the WWF recognized by global standards. A lack of transparency as to the exact amount of CO2 emissions also raises concerns as many have suggested that 4.6 million tons of carbon released is an enormous underestimate with organizations like Greenly estimating 6 million tons. That’s just under double of what was pledged to be combatted. And then you’ve got the litter and pollution made by fans. It seems awfully like this so called ‘Green’ world cup has undergone a large dose of greenwashing – falsely advertising something to be eco-friendly with no official authentication.
It’s hard to look at a sport so many of us love with such a critical eye. Standing together, cheering together, grieving goals together – its fun. And Qatar has had an amazing opportunity to open up a growth in hospitality industries and a better commercial relationship with the rest of the world. But as I’ve said before, we have to stand up for those that can’t. We have chose what is right over what is easy. We have to inform ourselves before we defend large organizations. We cannot let our enjoyment of a sport, stand in the way of what is quite frankly a disgusting disregard of morality from FIFA. This is our world, we should hold those who harm either it or it’s inhabitants responsible. We will have to deal with the consequences for not taking a stand, for not saying no this is not right, I do not support this. Silence, complacency, will help no one – least of all our selves.
So, if you ask me – no, this world cup was not worth it. Far be it from me to push my views on you – do your own research, read, learn, talk to people. It is misinformation, after all, that has enabled FIFA to get away with this world cup. But if you want my thoughts – football is just a sport. There will be other games, other players, other trophies to win or lose. There is only one of all those migrant workers who died as slaves, there is only one planet, the people of the LGBTQIA+ community are unique just as you are and they are people. People who deserve just as good a life as anybody else. We cannot make right the wrongs of this world cup by only celebrating the good times. That is not how change works. FIFA must answer, they have not only jeopardized human rights, the planet, they have jeopardized the integrity of their sport. Football can be beautiful, an amazing game. Let us not allow it to be polluted again in this way by saying now that this was not right, this was never right and it will not be tolerated. Let us, the fans say now that we do not care how they mask it, how they play to our love of a sport – we see what they have done. We will not allow it to happen again.