The Qatari authorities must re-commit to fully delivering on promised labour reforms now and beyond the World Cup, Amnesty International said today, as its final pre-tournament briefing on migrant workers’ conditions revealed that abuses remain rife across the country. With just one month until kick-off, the human rights organization again reiterated its call on FIFA and Qatar to establish a compensation fund for abused migrant workers.
Qatar’s overhaul of its labour system since 2017 has led to some noticeable improvements for the country’s two million migrant workers – hundreds of thousands of whom have been engaged in projects essential to the World Cup. However, a lack of effective implementation and enforcement continues to undermine their impact on migrant workers. Thousands of workers across all projects are still facing issues such as delayed or unpaid wages, denial of rest days, unsafe working conditions, barriers to changing jobs, and limited access to justice, while the deaths of thousands of workers remain uninvestigated.
“Although Qatar has made important strides on labour rights over the past five years, it’s abundantly clear that there is a great distance still to go. Thousands of workers remain stuck in the familiar cycle of exploitation and abuse thanks to legal loopholes and inadequate enforcement,” said Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International’s Head of Economic and Social Justice.
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