A. Summary.

Robert Booth, Owen Gibson and Pete Pattisson have posted an article in The Guardian on Thursday September 26th 2013 about the conditions for migrant workers in Qatar.
Qatar has imported a high amount of foreign workers to complete stadiums, hotels and infrastructure before the 2022 World Cup, which is being held in Qatar. A high number of these workers come from Nepal and India.
The working conditions are criticized by both an investigation led by The Guardian and the Nepali embassy. According to The Guardian, the workers are working under so horrendous conditions that they lead to sickness and high number of deaths.
Qatari unions have warned that, there could be more than 4000 deaths before 2022. The general secretary of The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) Sharan Burrow, states that the Qatari government are not reacting on this issue, and therefore it is unsolved. Even though only few of the deaths have conducted autopsies, he claims that there is no doubt that the workers are dying because of the conditions they work under. He claims that there should be implemented the highest standards for the 2022 World Cup – also in concern of the workers. The Nepalese ambassador agrees with this, but has returned to Nepal.

B. Discussion

In all times it has been a discussion on whether some countries were to be allowed to host countries for the biggest sport events. The Olympic games, European Championship and World Cup are all sport events that will be economical beneficial for the host country.
Therefore it has also always been a ‘hot potato’. And it has often been alleged that there were huge payments under the table to ensure the sport event and that other methods were in use. One thing is for sure. It demands a great capital to ensure these events. Qatar has this economical capital.
I assume that there are regulations from ITUC to be chosen as a host county and it would easily be possible to include an etic codex to assure that civil rights, as a minimum, are guaranteed.
It is, of course, a problem that the chosen World Cup host country does not live up to the wanted ‘highest standards’, that are demanded by e.g. the sportsmen. Unfortunately money breeds power and this power breeds disrespect and arrogance. Qatar is in this case a good example of this by the fact that you do not treat the migrants that you have invited properly. There is nothing respectable about that.
I think that it is difficult to demand ITUC to be police officers in assuring that the host countries are maintaining what Burrow calls ‘highest standards’, because it, in the end, also takes a lot of economic surplus to arrange this sort of event.
If you look at the Olympic Games for the last 10 times it has been held, 4 (Rio De Janerio – 2016 - , Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul), out of the 10 times has been in countries, that in some way has issues living up to ‘the very highest standards’ and even just civil rights.
This is also a sports event that demands a strong infrastructure and an economic surplus to organize.
It has previously led to scandals, which were necessary to handle along the way because the countries did not agree on what high standards were.
I think that the prime consequence you can give countries as Qatar is from the consumers and it should come from them primarily. They are in Qatar to see World Cup and they have the largest impact on the calculations on whether or not it has been a good investment for Qatar to host World Cup. Were they to boycott World Cup because of Qatar’s malfunctioning civil rights system for migrants and the poor working conditions they have put, and then we would seriously see an effect.
Though this is much more difficult than writing regulations to uphold, it would have the largest impact on Qatar.