World News
Why Qatar is a contentious World Cup host
Nov
Qatar was chosen to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the first time the tournament has been held in the Arab world.
The announcement that Qatar will host the 2018 FIFA World Cup sparked celebrations in Doha, marking the first time the championship would be staged in the Arab region.
But the decision, which was made in 2010, also drew immediate criticism, including questions about the viability of holding a sporting event in a nation where summer temperatures routinely reach 100 degrees, claims of bribery and corruption against FIFA officials who supported Qatar, and worries about ongoing human rights violations.
The Gulf nation is now anticipating the arrival of more than a million supporters as the World Cup is only days away. And billions more people will watch the 64 games of the tournament. But the debates are still going strong.
Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter said it was a mistake to choose Qatar to host the World Cup.
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Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter said it was a mistake to choose Qatar to host the World Cup.
Recently, even the previous president of FIFA criticized the choice of Qatar.
“It was a poor decision.” “And as president at the time, I was accountable for it,” Sepp Blatter, whose tenure as FIFA’s executive director came to an end in 2015 due to a bribery scandal, remarked.
Deaths of migrant workers and a lack of infrastructure
The World Cup is a complicated international athletic event that attracts large numbers of spectators and necessitates the infrastructure to support them. Qatar is the smallest country to ever host it.
Qatar is nearly 20% smaller than Connecticut, with only 4,471 square miles. The majority of the nation’s 2.8 million inhabitants dwell in the region around the capital Doha, which is surrounded by a desolate sandy plain.
When it was chosen to host the tournament in 2010, Qatar lacked several of the stadiums, hotels, and roads necessary. The nation relied on its sizable population of migrant laborers, who make up 90% or more of its labor force, to construct them. Only roughly 300,000 people who live in Qatar are nationals of that country. Migrant workers, whose visas are linked to their employment—a system that is widespread in the Middle East—far outnumber them.
For such migratory laborers, living and working circumstances were typically hazardous and exploitative. More than 6,500 migrant workers from five south Asian nations have perished in Qatar since 2010 from all reasons, including work-related accidents, automobile accidents, suicides, and fatalities from other factors including the heat, according to a 2021 investigation by the Guardian.
“Some of them consist of construction workers who passed away after collapsing on the job site while building the stadium.” Others who were traveling to work on a corporate bus perished in traffic collisions. “And others in their labor camps died very suddenly and mysteriously,” Pete Pattison, one of the reporters working on the investigation, confirmed in a 2016 NPR interview.
Qatar and FIFA both contest that figure. Qatar acknowledges the deaths of 37 employees that were “non-work-related,” but claims that just three individuals have died as a direct consequence of working on World Cup construction sites.
The World Cup is seen by Qatar as a “great chance to strengthen welfare standards,” and the country’s authorities claim that working conditions have improved as a result: The nation implemented a set of Workers’ Welfare Standards in 2014, resulting in additional safeguards (although advocates say the new regulations are not always enforced).
In May, a group of human rights organizations urged FIFA and Qatar to establish a remedy fund, which would be a pot of money that could be used to make amends for the mistreatment of migrant workers and the families of those killed while constructing stadiums and other World Cup-related infrastructure.
They assert that the fund should have a minimum value of $440 million, which is the same as the World Cup prize money.
“We believe that athletes do not want to play in venues where construction workers have died.” Fans, in our opinion, don’t want to utilize hotels or metros that cost workers their lives to construct “Human Rights Watch,” one of the groups advocating for the fund, which is represented by Minky Worden, director of global projects.
For many players, the November schedule has been challenging.
Summertime is the customary time for the World Cup. However, because of the extreme heat and humidity in Qatar throughout the summer, the event was moved to November. (The games will also take place in venues with air conditioning.)
Professional soccer has been greatly impacted by the scheduling, particularly in Europe, where the majority of league calendars normally stretch from late summer through the following spring. The Premier League in England, the Bundesliga in Germany, and La Liga in Spain are just a few of the top professional leagues that have declared two-month pauses to accommodate the World Cup.
According to a recent assessment by FIFPRO, the organization that speaks on behalf of 65,000 players worldwide, that crammed schedule has put “unprecedented workload expectations” on the players.
The analysis revealed that historically, Premier League players have had an average of 31 days to prepare and 37 days to recuperate for a normal midsummer World Cup. According to the union, preparation and recuperation times were reduced to seven and eight days this year.
The research claims that “overlapping tournaments, back-to-back matches, harsh weather, a rushed preparation period, and inadequate recuperation time all represent an alarming hazard to player health and performance.”
According to FIFPRO expert and exercise scientist Darren Burgess, there will be “a fairly significant danger” of injury for players taking part in the cup.
From Macallcloth
