FIFA's reluctance to rectify construction working conditions ahead of Qatar 2022 is disgraceful

FIFA’s recent announcement that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar will take place in November/December just undermines what everyone who lives outside of FIFA headquarters knows – that the World Cup never should have been awarded to Qatar in the first place. At this point, the apparent corruption, miscalculations, lack of commonsense judgment, and all-around bloated, cartoonish villainy surrounding FIFA and its Qatar World Cup is so ridiculous that it hardly matters anymore what time of year the tournament takes place. FIFA will do what FIFA wants and that has become the big problem.

Last May, ESPN’s Jeremy Schapp produced this heartbreaking story for E:60 about the mistreatment of foreign workers in Qatar. It is essential viewing, stunning in its report of workers lured from countries like India, Pakistan, and Nepal by the promise of decent wages (which they could use to help support families back home) to work on stadium and infrastructure construction projects for the 2022 World Cup.

As Schapp reports, Qatar has less than 300,000 citizens, so over one million foreign workers comprise 94% of Qatar’s labor force. Once in Qatar, these foreign workers are made to sign restrictive labor contracts that make it impossible for them to leave the country (their employers even take possession of the workers’ passports). Hundreds of these workers have died of cardiac arrest attributable to extreme working conditions, poor diet, and unsanitary living quarters. Schapp interviewed Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, who says “Qatar is a slave state in the 21st century… [for these workers] It’s a life of squalor. You are trapped in Qatar.”

Unfortunately the E:60 story made few ripples in the media, swamped instead by the pre-Brazil 2014 World Cup hype. Naturally, people will find reasons to protest the World Cup taking place in just about any country in the world (Russia 2018 is a topic for another day), but the lack of human decency toward workers in Qatar as reported by Schapp is particularly grievous.

Disturbingly, FIFA has the leverage and resources to easily stop these abuses yet stubbornly refuses to do so. At the very least FIFA could and should pay for full-time inspectors on the ground in Qatar to help ensure these workers receive basic, fair protections. FIFA would never miss the money it would take to construct basic apartments for these workers that would easily be more luxurious than the sites where so many currently dwell.

I understand FIFA wanting to grow the game in other parts of the world and wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with a World Cup in Qatar (apart from its climate barely being conducive to outdoor soccer). The problem is the abuse of innocent people to construct stadiums that Qatar will have virtually no use for after the tournament. By now we are accustomed to such colossal wastes of resources (see South Africa and Brazil), but just because the practice has become commonplace doesn’t mean it should continue. The world has plenty of countries with more than enough stadiums to host luxurious World Cup tournaments.

How can soccer fans become aware of these human rights abuses, then shrug that we’re powerless to affect any change, and go back to playing FIFA on our game consoles, in turn helping fund the madness? As fans, it’s difficult to know where to begin solving this FIFA problem. Boycotting the 2022 World Cup seems a natural response, but it’s hard to imagine enough of the world’s fans uniting behind such an effort.

Perhaps it is time to create an entirely new governing body alternative to FIFA, and in turn, an alternative tournament to the World Cup. Farfetched? Completely unrealistic? Most likely, but it doesn’t mean such radical solutions shouldn’t be entertained. Would nations like the U.S., Great Britain, or Germany continue to stand by and let FIFA run riot if American, British, or German workers were suffering these abuses in Qatar?

Near the end of Schapp’s report he asks Burrow what kind of failure it would be on the part of the international community if in 2022 the World Cup is held in a Qatar that resembles the current Qatar. Burrow replies, “It’s insanely criminal.”

The World Cup is fun. I love it. I want to watch it. There will never be a World Cup devoid of some kind of human injustice somewhere – unfortunately that is the way of the world, not just FIFA – but these Qatar 2022 injustices deserve attention and demand action. Qatar 2022 is still seven years away so there is time to improve these working conditions, right some of the wrongs, and make the tournament at least semi-respectable. FIFA is the entity most culpable and capable of rectifying this situation now.

FIFA shouldn’t have a monopoly on the world’s game. An organized, unifying governing body for soccer that facilitates a World Cup tournament isn’t a bad thing. But FIFA has severely lost the plot and if soccer’s regional governing bodies or individual country federations can’t help them regain it, then it is time to write a brand new story – one that values human life and freedom over money.