Migrant workers will die if Saudi Arabia hosts World Cup – Amnesty International

FIFA has been urged to halt a vote to hand Saudi Arabia hosting rights to the 2034 men’s World Cup by human rights groups, amid fears many migrant workers will die unless there is credible reform.

National associations are set to vote at an extraordinary FIFA Congress on December 11, with Saudi Arabia the sole bidder.

Amnesty International and the Sport and Rights Alliance (SRA) say as things stand, a tournament in Saudi Arabia will lead to severe and widespread rights violations.

They have urged national federations, such as the Football Association in England, to also call on FIFA to halt the vote.

“There will be a real and predictable human cost to awarding the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia without obtaining credible guarantees of reform,” Steve Cockburn, Amnesty’s head of labour rights and sport, said.

“Fans will face discrimination, residents will be forcibly evicted, migrant workers will face exploitation, and many will die.

“Saudi Arabia will require a vast number of migrant workers to deliver its World Cup ambitions, yet there are no commitments to reform the country’s exploitative ‘kafala’ sponsorship system, establish a minimum wage for non-citizens, permit them to join trade unions or introduce new measures to prevent worker deaths.

“Saudi Arabia’s human rights strategy does not address the government’s severe repression of free speech and the continued imprisonment of individuals who have been sentenced to decades in prison merely for their expression, suggesting that there is no serious commitment to reform.

“FIFA must halt the process until proper human rights protections are in place to avoid worsening an already dire situation.”

A new report from Amnesty and the SRA also calls on FIFA to demand credible and binding human rights commitments from the three nations set to be the principal hosts of the 2030 tournament – Morocco, Portugal and Spain.

Cockburn said those countries “have still not adequately explained how players and fans will be protected from discriminatory abuse, what measures will be taken to prevent the excessive use of police force, or how residents’ housing rights will be safeguarded”.

SRA director Andrea Florence said: “Unless FIFA is honest about the scale and severity of the risks ahead, and acts to prevent them, it will be clear that its commitment to human rights is a sham.

“FIFA was the first global sports body to introduce human rights criteria in its selection process for a mega-sporting event, so it would be shocking to see the organisation now completely jettison these principles in favour of its bottom line.”

The Saudi state directly or indirectly owns almost 98 per cent of the shares in energy company Aramco, which earlier this year became a major sponsor of FIFA in a deal worth a reported 400 million US dollars (£308.3m) over four years.

FIFA’s bid evaluation reports are expected to be published in advance of the December 11 vote, although no date has been given.

FIFA Council decided at a meeting in October that the hosting of 2030 and 2034 would be determined by a single vote by its member national associations at a virtual Congress, rather than one vote per tournament.

The Amnesty-SRA report called for the votes to be separated so “each bid is scrutinised in its own right”.

There has also been criticism that Saudi Arabia’s hosting of 2034 was engineered by FIFA. It confirmed on October 4 last year that only applications from countries in Asia and Oceania would be accepted for 2034, and then allowed less than a month for declarations of interest to be lodged.

Saudi Arabia confirmed within hours of that FIFA announcement, and Australia announced they had opted against challenging the Saudis on October 31 last year.

A FIFA spokesperson said: “FIFA is implementing thorough bidding processes for the 2030 and 2034 editions of the FIFA World Cup, in line with previous processes for the selection of hosts for the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 in Australia and New Zealand, the FIFA World Cup 2026 in the United States, Mexico and Canada and the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2027 in Brazil.”