By Catarina Vita
December
Every four years, not only do football fans from all around the globe gather to watch the sport but so does most of the world’s population. FIFA, the International Federation of Football Association, is responsible for the World Cup and decided to host the 2022 games in Qatar. Appalled by the workers’ rights violations and the imminent climate crisis in Qatar, a portion of the World Cup audience considered boycotting the tournament. However, counterarguments arose: the consideration of a boycott only popularized when the World Cup was located in the Middle East, and Qatar’s longstanding history of poor labor rights makes the timing of the boycott hypocritical.
With increased international knowledge of Qatar’s recently abolished kafala system, alongside continued worker maltreatment in the country, potential World Cup spectators considered not watching the tournament at all. The kafala system, by definition, is a labor system connecting foreign workers to a local employer with no relation to labor ministries. As a result, workers have no rights, and many complain about a lack of breaks and overwhelmingly long working hours. Despite the Qatari government’s 2016 termination of the system, Amnesty International reports that the reform was “inadequate” and still allowed foreign workers to be exploited by their bosses. Furthermore, it is also argued that Qatar did not have the proper infrastructure for the World Cup. The high mortality rate among immigrants was due to the fast-paced manual labor of building stadiums.
The climate crisis in Qatar also made the choice of country subject to criticism. Due to the ever-rising temperature in the country, even during the fall season in November and December, the government installed air conditioners inside seven of eight football stadiums. The total Qatar World Cup carbon emissions predicted were upwards of 3.6 million tons, while the tournament in Brazil and Russia had an estimated two million tons emitted.
Some perceive the boycott to be either ineffective or contradictory. Although FIFA was involved in an extensive corruption scandal throughout the 2010s, the other World Cups were still watched and appreciated. Moreover, human rights violations in other World Cup host countries, such as massive corruption and torture in Brazil and anti-LGBTQIA+ stances in Russia, did not incur such international resistance. Qatar was the first Middle Eastern nation to host a World Cup, and the fact that only then did boycott ideas surface raises questions about the general perceptions of Middle Eastern countries.
Although the human rights violations in Qatar and threats to the environment are alarming, it is of the utmost importance that one approaches the situation holistically. Forced labor and the kafala system gained attention due to boycott conversations. While the World Cup has already occurred, it is paramount not to discard these issues in future discourse. The worsening climate crisis and human rights violations are not limited to one country in the Global South; as these conversations arose because of the World Cup, it is vital to research and raise awareness about them on a global scale.