Time for action on human rights and mega-sporting events

Last week Mary Robinson and John Ruggie wrote a letter of behalf of IHRB to FIFA President ‘Sepp’ Blatter in the lead up to the 2014 World Cup, urging football’s governing body to fully integrate human rights considerations into its decision-making.

The letter – which was also sent to the CEOs of major corporate sponsors – follows recent welcome reports that FIFA is considering making human rights a part of the bid process for future World Cups.

Our report, Striving For Excellence: Mega-Sporting Events and Human Rights, includes a series of recommendations for sports governing bodies such as FIFA, as well as their sponsors, host governments and mega-sporting events (MSE) organising bodies, on ways to ensure sustained human rights due diligence at these events.

We have followed this up with the recent launch of a comprehensive website – currently available in English and Portuguese, www.megasportingevents.org, which provides key MSE stakeholders with a resource to help them better understand the human rights impacts of these events. The website shares emerging good practices on the practical steps needed to address these challenges.

The need for ongoing human rights due diligence around mega-sporting events is becoming increasingly urgent. As the football world currently focuses all its attention on Brazil and the 2014 World Cup, controversy surrounding FIFA and the Qatar bid to host in 2022 has resurfaced. The Sunday Times recently published a serial investigation based on leaked documents which it claims shows that secret payments exceeding $5 million were made to buy votes at the 2010 FIFA election to secure the 2022 World Cup for Qatar.

The Sunday Times’ report alleges that the Qatar 2022 bid committee, government and members of the Royal family were implicated in this wrong-doing. The Qatari authorities have denied the allegations. This latest wave of media scrutiny has prompted major FIFA sponsors to voice their concerns publicly for the first time, and to call for the Sunday Times’ assertions to be factored into an ongoing FIFA internal investigation into the 2010 vote.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter has admitted that it was a mistake to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar because of the hot summer temperatures, and possible need to reschedule the event to the winter. This admission came against a backdrop of the ongoing corruption allegations surrounding the election in 2010 of Russia and Qatar as World Cup hosts, and reports from the Guardian, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Trade Union Confederation, which claim to have identified slave-like conditions facing migrant workers in the Qatar construction sector as it gears up for the 2022 World Cup.

In September 2013 the Guardian reported that 44 Nepali migrant workers had died during two months on Qatar construction projects. More recently, media have highlighted a major study Qatar commissioned from law firm DLA Piper into the treatment of migrant workers. According to the Guardian, the DLA report - which proposes up to 60 reforms - uses the Qatar government’s own figures, and puts the numbers of migrants from Nepal, India and Bangladesh who have died in Qatar during 2012 and 2013 at almost one thousand, with many dying from ‘sudden cardiac death’; the number of work-related accidents was comparatively low.

Human rights organisations and trade unionists have alleged instances of forced labour, migrant workers being denied employment contracts and their salaries, and having their passports confiscated. Criticism has also been levelled against Qatar’s law banning foreign workers from joining trade unions and the Kafala sponsorship system, which also operates in several other Gulf States and prevents migrant workers from changing jobs or leaving the country without their sponsor company's permission.

Now that Michael Garcia, the independent chairman of FIFA’s Ethics Commission and investigation unit, is about to issue the findings of a long-running investigation into the bidding process to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, it is perhaps time to reflect on the fact that exposure around the World Cup has led to a rethink within the Qatar government and the promise of reform. Colonel Abdullah Saqr al-Mohannadi, human rights director of the Qatari interior ministry, announced earlier this year that: "[The Kafala system] will be replaced by a contractual relationship between employer and employee.”

Richard Howitt, a British member of the European Parliament, says: "The Qatari government has assured [a European Parliamentary delegation] they will make reforms to the sponsorship system and bring forward a law for the protection of domestic workers.” Separately, the Qatar's Supreme Committee - the local organising committee for the 2022 World Cup – has issued a set of Workers’ Welfare Standards for World Cup related projects which aims to address the concerns around human rights abuses of migrant workers.

In parallel, there are reports that FIFA itself may be considering making human rights a factor in the new bidding rules it is developing for potential 2026 World Cup hosts. This follows a statement by FIFA Executive Committee member, Theo Zwanziger, in evidence in February before the European Parliament in relation to the migrant worker exploitation allegations in Qatar, that FIFA was looking into the possibility of giving “human rights a much higher status” in the World Cup bidding process.

The devil will be in the detail. Campaigners have questioned Qatar’s sincerity over the proposed Kafala system reforms, with Amnesty International pointing out that a similar promise made in 2008 to introduce a law safeguarding domestic workers’ rights has yet to materialise. The International Labour Organisation in a press release has also commented that whilst the new Workers Welfare Standards took on board some of its advice, not all it’s recommendations - in particular around freedom of association and collective bargaining, and the adoption of a minimum wage - were reflected in the published standards. It is in Qatar’s hands to reassure critics that their concerns will be taken into account and its new proposals will be consistent with international standards. The best outcome of awarding the FIFA Cup to Qatar would be tangible improvement in the day-to-day working experience of migrant workers in Qatar.

The new willingness by FIFA sponsors to speak out on governance issues relating to mega-sporting events is welcome, as is FIFA’s readiness to give human rights a stronger place in the World Cup bidding process. There are of course major human rights issues in other host countries other than Qatar. In recent days tear gas has been used against Brazilian protestors, where Sao Paulo metro workers went on strike ahead of the 2014 World Cup. There have also been reports that police used live ammunition in the vicinity of anti-World Cup protestors in Rio de Janeiro. This comes after continuing reports of families from Brazil’s poorest neighbourhoods being evicted to make way for sports-related infrastructure, investigations into child prostitution and trafficking in the run up the to World Cup, and one year on from the street protests that swept Brazil’s major cities, which were partly fuelled by bitterness over the money being spent on the World Cup instead of public services. In Russia too, the host for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, there is systematic discrimination against the LGBT community and concerns over racism and racial football chanting.

FIFA needs to put mechanisms in place so that when problems of this kind occur or warning signs emerge they are dealt with effectively. Making such decisions requires sharing of information about international standards and best practices. There is also a place for greater collaboration between sports governing bodies, host governments, and organising committees and delivery bodies, as well as the sponsors and companies that help finance and deliver the stadiums, merchandise and facilities. All involved in major sporting events have a role to play in ensuring human rights are respected at every stage, and that the voices of the poor or marginalised are heard.