[JURIST] Migrant workers preparing for the 2022 World Cup in Doha, Qatar, are facing systematic abuses, Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] said in a report [text, PDF] released Thursday. The report included interviews from 234 migrant workers building the Kahlifa International Stadium in Doha or landscaping areas surrounding the Aspire Zone sports complex. These interviews revealed that many workers had been deceived, finding that their salaries were lower than promised and their living conditions included “squalid labour camps, with overcrowded rooms and few facilities.” Workers also reported being threatened by their employers when they complained of late payment and their poor working conditions. Many of the contracting companies hiring these migrant workers, including Eversendai and Nakheel, have reportedly confiscated the passports of their migrant employees, “stop[ping] workers from exercising their right to leave a country and mak[ing] them more vulnerable to forced labour.” AI went on to state that these conditions were in violation of the UN Guiding Principles of Business and Human Rights [text, PDF], requiring companies to have a human rights due diligence process in place to “identify, prevent, mitigate and—where necessary—redress human rights abuses connected to their operations[.]” AI called upon FIFA and their sponsors to push for a reform plan by 2017.

The tendency for migrant workers to have fewer protections than other classes of workers has created controversy for years. In November Human Rights Watch reported that Saudi Arabia’s new labor laws protect migrant workers [JURIST report] by forbidding employers from confiscating passports, forbidding employers from paying salaries late, and forbidding employers from not showing employees their contracts. In September the UAE announced new labor reforms [JURIST report] to provide increased oversight on the thousands of employment agreements conducted with temporary migrant workers. In April 2014, AI reported on the human rights abuses faced by migrant domestic workers [JURIST report] in Qatar.