In the early hours of Saturday 30 November, Fifa released a glowing evaluation of Saudi Arabia’s bid to host the 2034 World Cup, giving it the joint-highest score of any bidding nation and declaring it carried only a “medium” human rights risk.
At the same time, it slipped out a long-awaited report on whether it should compensate migrant workers who suffered severe labour abuses on projects linked to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Despite a recommendation from its own subcommittee on human rights and social responsibility that it do so, Fifa’s answer was, in effect, a resounding no.
The reports provoked a backlash from human rights groups, which called the former an “astonishing whitewash” and the latter “insulting”. The uncompromising language reflects frustration within human rights organisations that Fifa has learned nothing from Qatar and a belief that the gross exploitation of cheap labour is about to be repeated.
When the Guardian first revealed the appalling conditions endured by low-wage migrant workers in Qatar in 2013, it triggered an international outcry. Hundreds of thousands of men from some of the poorest corners of the world were toiling in the scorching desert heat to build the infrastructure and stadiums for the 2022 World Cup.
Testimonies from workers laid bare the litany of abuses they faced: passport confiscation, late or nonpayment of wages, inhumane living conditions and a “sponsorship” system that meant they could not change their jobs regardless of how they were treated.
Thousands died in the decade leading up to the tournament. It was, many believed, a form of modern enslavement in the service of football. And now it is the turn of Qatar’s bigger, brasher neighbour, Saudi Arabia. In its World Cup bid, the Gulf kingdom set out ambitious plans for 11 new stadiums – Qatar built seven – a massive expansion of its transport infrastructure and more than 185,000 new hotel rooms, four times its current number.
Like Qatar, Saudi Arabia’s World Cup infrastructure will be largely built by migrant workers from south Asia. There are more than 13 million foreigners in the country – at least 2 million from Bangladesh alone – and those numbers are expected to soar as construction linked to the tournament ramps up.
For more than a year, human rights groups have warned of the risks they will face, with Amnesty International last month calling for the bidding process to be halted unless huge reforms were put in place, saying, “migrant workers will face exploitation, and many will die”.
Those warnings are already proving prescient. Last month, it was revealed that Bangladeshi workers constructing the first new proposed stadium for the World Cup alleged they are being subjected to serious labour rights violations. Trapped by massive recruitment debts, with their meagre wages withheld for months, they toil through 10-hour shifts in the scorching summer heat, only to return each day to squalid, overcrowded rooms that resemble prison cells.
Earlier this year, a Guardian investigation found that, on average, four Bangladeshis die in Saudi Arabia every day – a death toll that is largely unexamined and unexplained.
The Saudi authorities and Fifa acknowledge there is work to be done to improve the treatment of migrant workers but argue – just as they did in Qatar – that the World Cup will act as a catalyst for change.
That is not a view shared by workers who are still in Qatar. “There has been no improvement in workers’ lives here,” said one.
“People are struggling to find work, many don’t even have money for food. After the World Cup, each day is worse than the day before.”
