The UN’s labour rights watchdog, the International Labour Organization (ILO), is facing a backlash over the nomination of Qatar to chair its flagship annual conference despite a police investigation into alleged bribery of EU lawmakers by the Gulf state.
The Guardian has learned that Qatar’s minister of labour, Ali bin Saeed bin Samikh Al Marri, is expected to take the presidency of the ILO’s international labour conference in Geneva in June, an annual event intended to advance global standards on workers’ rights.
Marri’s name cropped up in the Belgian police investigation into the “Qatargate” scandal at the European parliament after it emerged he had met the chief suspect, Pier Antonio Panzeri, an Italian former MEP, at a five-star Brussels hotel before a meeting with lawmakers where it is alleged the minister faced planted softball questions from some representatives.
Panzeri struck a plea bargain deal with prosecutors after being charged with money laundering, corruption and membership of a criminal organisation. Marri has never been charged or publicly accused of any wrongdoing.
The International Trade Union Confederation, which claims to represent 200 million workers, has written to the UN body to express “strong concerns” about Qatar’s likely presidency of the conference, which runs from 5-16 June in Geneva. The ITUC warns of a “reputational risk” to the ILO, citing Qatar’s “insufficiently effective” labour reforms and “allegations that attempts have been made to influence decision makers in the European Union in a highly inappropriate manner”.
The ITUC’s acting general secretary, Luc Triangle, told the Guardian: “With this letter we wanted to make clear to the ILO president that we are absolutely unhappy with this proposal because it undermines the credibility of the ILO.”
The decision to nominate Qatar for the conference presidency – which has to be formally confirmed by ILO member states, employers and union representatives at the start of the event – turns the spotlight on the Geneva-based body after criticism that it “whitewashed” the Gulf state’s labour reforms before the 2022 men’s football World Cup.
One former ILO official, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Guardian the ILO had been “whitewashing Qatar” in the run-up to the World Cup and produced “biased” reporting on the Gulf state’s workforce reforms.
The person said the ILO’s office in Doha was mostly funded by the Qatari government, and they raised questions about $25m the Gulf state had paid towards an ILO programme to increase worker protections in the country. Qatar’s $25m contribution was not publicised when the “technical assistance” programme was launched in 2017.
“The ILO has been dependent on the [Qatar] reform programme on Qatari money, that’s for sure,” said the former ILO official. “It’s not the first time the ILO is doing programmes with governments, but it’s unusual that such a huge amount of money is put on the table.”
On a two-day visit to Doha last December, the ILO’s director general, Gilbert Houngbo, praised Qatar’s “progress” in labour reforms, citing changes to the kafala sponsorship system, which was designed to give employers total control over foreign workers. Houngbo also cited improvements to health and safety at work, citing restrictions on daytime working hours during summer to combat heat stress.
The UN agency’s positive reports were cited by the Greek MEP Eva Kaili during a European parliament debate last November when she declared that “Qatar is a frontrunner in labour rights”. About a month later, she was arrested on charges of corruption and money laundering in the cash-for-influence scandal. She has strongly denied all accusations of wrongdoing.
But the glowing messages contrast with the findings of independent observers. Human Rights Watch has said the Qatari reforms were “woefully inadequate in protecting workers’ rights” and “poorly enforced”, while unions have said that since the World Cup, rogue employers in Qatar have been “emboldened by an absence of enforcement and growing confidence that rights violations will go unpunished”.
When the ILO said last August that more than 242,000 workers had changed jobs since the introduction of kafala reforms, the NGO Fair Square said that figure was “implausibly high given what we know about employers easily circumventing the kafala law”.
Fair Square has also described Qatar’s changes to summertime working hours as “demonstrably ineffective”.
Nicholas McGeehan, a co-director at Fair Square, said: “To award Qatar presidency of the ILC at a time when its labour reforms are still the subject of such controversy, and the Qatari labour minister is a central figure in the Qatargate scandal would be an act of monumental folly from the ILO, and would lead to accusations that it has been captured by the Gulf state at a time when it urgently needs to demonstrate its independence and impartiality.”
But the ITUC, which is now leading the complaints, also faces criticism over its record on Qatar. A former ITUC general secretary, Sharan Burrow, told football fans last November to go to the World Cup and “have fun”, as she hailed Qatar’s “incredible progress”. She also said it was a “myth” that more than 6,000 workers had died on construction sites.
An investigation by the Guardian in 2021 revealed that more than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka had died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup a decade before.
Burrow’s replacement, Luca Visentini, was sacked in March after it emerged he had taken money from a Brussels NGO founded by Panzeri, the Italian former MEP seen as the linchpin of the corruption network. Visentini said he was innocent and all the money from Panzeri’s NGO had gone to the trade union movement.
Triangle, who took up his post on 1 May, declined to comment on statements by his predecessors, other than to say Burrow had acted with good intentions.
He said Qatar “still a long, very long road to go … where we can speak about free trade unions, where we can speak about workers’ rights, where workers can go somewhere to report a violation by an employer without being harassed afterwards or even worse.”
Burrow has been contacted for comment.
In a statement, the ILO said it took the issues raised in the ITUC’s letter extremely seriously. “While there has been undeniable progress on the labour reforms in Qatar, all parties recognise that there remains much to be done. The concerns highlighted in the ITUC letter, as well as other critical issues, are being raised with the government of Qatar by the ILO,” it said.
The ILO also said the $25m contribution from Qatar had been used to fund a six-year programme and was publicised on its website. “It is not unusual for a government to fund an office within their own country, and this funding mechanism does not affect the independence of the ILO,” it added.
In response to criticism of “biased” and misleading reporting on Qatar, the ILO said it had pointed to “the positive trajectory of labour reforms in Qatar” since the technical cooperation project began in 2017, but added that it had always and continued to “highlight specific gaps and challenges that remain in implementation and enforcement”.
Qatar’s ministry for labour had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication. Qatar’s government has consistently denied any wrongdoing in the Belgian police investigation into cash for influence.
