The Red Card: Qatar’s Controversies Step Into the Global Limelight

NIKITA NAIR

Across the world, millions of fans are tuning into the FIFA World Cup, ready for another year of victories and shock upsets. This year, though, the narrative around the World Cup has been far more controversial than the past. Experts and soccer fans alike have wondered how a tiny nation, smaller than Connecticut and with a population of a little over 3 million, can host one of the greatest sporting events in the world. All eyes are focused as Qatar attempts to score the goal and join 21 other nations in sporting history. 

Until now, Qatar has been an unfamiliar name for many around the globe. A country lodged in between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, it had little significance on the world stage until the discovery of oil fields in the 1940s. Today, Qatar has become increasingly recognizable to the average citizen, having launched an international airline and as the headquarters for global news agency Al Jazeera. But why host the World Cup? For Qatar, and for numerous other countries, the World Cup can serve as a medal of prestige, elevating them to the same stage as other major international superpowers. The honor involved in being selected and the responsibility to deliver for the hundreds of thousands of fans that would descend upon Qatar would solidify their reputation in the minds of many others. Qatar, which has been facing numerous human rights allegations regarding their contentious migrant worker situation (a fraught point that has only become a bigger problem in the wake of the World Cup) perhaps saw hosting the World Cup as an opportunity to present a different reputation to the world. Additionally, with an economy highly dependent on oil and natural gas reserves, hosting the World Cup might allow Qatar to better diversify its economy. Qatar, though, wasn’t the only country that desired to be selected. 

For the FIFA deciding committee, the choice came down to Qatar and the United States. For most, the answer seemed obvious. After all, Qatar was a relatively tiny nation in comparison to the U.S, with scorching hot temperatures during the summer that regularly go over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Qatar lacked the infrastructure, stadiums and otherwise, to handle the high volume of visitors. The world was understandably shocked when FIFA announced that Qatar was selected to host the 2022 iteration. Critics of the decision brought up policies in Qatar, such as the effective criminalization of homosexuality, that would set the tone for the World Cup. Numerous human rights associations around the world have protested the decision. Amnesty International asked FIFA to “start tackling the serious human rights issues rather than brushing them under the carpet” In response, FIFA wrote a letter to participating countries highlighting their commitment to “diversity, mutual respect, and nondiscrimination”. Controversially, there have been reports with the start of the World Cup of fans being turned away at stadiums for wearing rainbow-colored clothing, a symbol of LGBTQ+ support. Despite FIFA’s supposed commitment, it appears there is a clear tension between the Qatari culture and FIFA’s values. 

In the wake of the selection of Qatar as host, doubt was cast as to whether the process held full integrity. In the coming years, FIFA’s then-head Sepp Blatter (who would step down in 2015 after his role in a bribery scandal), said that Qatar was “too small a country” and that the World Cup would be “too big for it”, despite having presided over the committee that selected Qatar as the final host. Allegations of bribery and corruption were also brought up though an internal FIFA investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of Qatari officials. In direct opposition to those findings however, the U.S Department of Justice said in 2020 that officials in Russia and Qatar had bribed members of the selection committee. Since the selection of Qatar in 2010, approximately a dozen FIFA officials who were involved in the selection were banned or indicted on corruption-related charges. The former president of UEFA (the official governing association for European soccer) and a famed player in his own right, Michel Platini was arrested in 2019 on charges of accepting a $2 million payment to support Qatar as the final host. 

While the selection of Qatar has its own controversies, even bigger issues have sprouted up with the planning and construction of infrastructure for the World Cup. Prior to the World Cup as well, Qatar’s labor force was constituted majorly by migrant workers; some figures estimate that only about 10% of Qatar’s workforce is made up of citizens. Migrant workers in Qatar typically come from Nepal, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. These individuals leave behind the little economic prospects they have back home to travel to Qatar and earn a wage to support their families. The phenomenon is so common in Nepal that a quarter of the national income is made up of remittances (money sent back home). The actual tragedy of what happens to many of those workers was exposed to a much broader audience during the construction for the World Cup. After going into debt to pay recruitment fees to secure the paperwork (often being charged rates that are 25 times the legal amount), they come to work in incredibly dangerous conditions. Qatar spent an estimated $220 billion rebuilding their infrastructure, much of which happened on the backs of migrant workers. Many worked in conditions that were simply far too hot and too demanding to be safe; a Guardian investigation found that more than 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since 2010 despite the Qatari government’s official figure of around 3 who had perished from workplace-related incidents. Alarmingly, the investigation notes that figures could be even higher; the toll doesn’t account for other major countries that send workers over to Qatar such as the Philippines or Nigeria. Families back home get little closure after the deaths of their loved ones. Most of the deaths are characterized as some sort of heart or respiratory failure; the typical cause of death when an autopsy is not conducted. Autopsies are not allowed, despite Qatar’s government lawyers recommending that autopsies should be permitted and that a study be commissioned into the heart issues that migrant workers often acquire as a result of their work. Back home, everyone is left to wonder how a perfectly healthy human could die overnight. 

Qatar’s negligence of its workers and poor human rights conditions have only been brought to a greater limelight than ever before. Perhaps, rather than being a magical panacea to make the world look away, hosting the World Cup has exploited Qatar’s wrongdoings to an even greater magnitude. Now the question remains: who will act as referee?