FIFA: Approve ‘Legacy Fund’ for 2022 World Cup Abuses. Rights Watch said today that FIFA should commit to utilizing the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Legacy Fund to pay migrant workers and their families for severe abuses connected to the 2022 World Cup. On March 16, 2023, FIFA will host its 73rd Congress in Kigali, Rwanda.
A recent study by Human Rights Watch uncovered enduring weaknesses in Qatar’s labor laws that left workers exposed before, during, and after the 2022 World Cup. The families of workers who passed away should receive compensation, as well as FIFA and the Qatari government. Ram Pukar Sahani has not gotten any compensation since his father passed away in May 2022 on a Qatari construction site. Now that I have no other choice except to search for employment abroad, my family’s finances would become unmanageable, Sahani remarked.
FIFA: Approve ‘Legacy Fund’ for 2022 World Cup Abuses
According to Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, “the 2022 World Cup in Qatar generated a whopping US$7.5 billion in revenue for FIFA, which has ignored the plight of migrant workers who made the tournament possible while they faced months of unpaid wages, hazardous working conditions, and unexplained deaths.” “FIFA should not miss yet another chance to make things right and pledge to direct the Legacy Fund toward victims of significant abuses,” the statement continued.
Eight global union federations wrote to FIFA in advance of the 73rd FIFA Congress to express their concern about the dismal circumstances facing employees in Qatar, especially the dearth of basic freedoms to associate and engage in collective bargaining. Human Rights Watch and a group of human rights organizations wrote a letter to FIFA President Gianni Infantino in February pleading with him to use the 2022 Legacy Fund to compensate wounded or deceased migrant workers’ families.
