Human rights organizations are alerting the world to a “surge” in migrant construction worker fatalities in Saudi Arabia as it prepares to host the 2034 World Cup.
Human Rights Watch and FairSquare both released reports today stating that workers are already losing their lives in the nation as a result of avoidable workplace accidents.
According to the reports, the families of workers are not compensated, and many of these deaths are mistakenly categorized as having occurred due to natural causes.
Both organizations have urged Saudi authorities to provide the vast migrant labor force in the country with fundamental safety safeguards.
“The 2034 Saudi World Cup will be the largest and most expensive ever, but it could also have the highest cost in human lives, as millions of migrant workers build infrastructure, including 11 new stadiums, a rail and transit network, and 185,000 hotel rooms,” Human Rights Watch’s director of Global Initiatives, Minky Worden, stated.
The warnings were issued a day after FIFA President Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump traveled to the nation to attend an investment forum between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
The international governing body of football, FIFA, claims to have a “steadfast commitment to the protection and promotion of human rights in the context of its operations.”
However, FIFA has come under fire from Human Rights Watch for allegedly failing to take note of the deaths of migrant workers in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
In a nation where labor unions are prohibited and human rights organizations have very limited access, statistics on migrant fatalities are difficult to obtain.
However, 31 workers from Bangladesh, India, and Nepal were electrocuted, crushed, or decapitated by heavy machinery, or fell from heights.
Human Rights Watch spoke with their families about these incidents.
As Saudi Arabia intensifies construction in anticipation of hosting the 2034 tournament, heat is yet another significant concern.
The first World Cup-related death occurred in March when Muhammad Arshad, a Pakistani foreman, was reported to have fallen from a construction site at a stadium being built in the eastern city of Al Khobar.
According to the Saudi government, there were “tangible achievements” in occupational health and safety last year, as evidenced by declining death and injury rates.
FIFA also commended Saudi Arabia for its “significant steps” to reform its labor laws since 2018.
However, BWI, a global union for construction workers, reported an “alarming rise” in accidents that could have been avoided.
Ambet Yuson, the general secretary of BWI, stated, “These are the result of systematic negligence, corruption, and inadequate oversight and accountability.”
Furthermore, according to FairSquare, Saudi medical authorities rarely perform autopsies to determine the precise cause of migrant workers’ deaths.
“Hundreds of thousands of young men, many of whom have young families, are being pitched into a labor system that poses a serious risk to their lives, a medical system that doesn’t have the capacity to determine the cause of their deaths, and a political system that doesn’t appear to either protect them or find out how they died, let alone compensate the families shattered by Saudi Arabia’s negligence,” FairSquare co-director James Lynch stated.
FIFA’s human rights policies, he said, are a “sham.”
“While FIFA praises Saudi Arabia to the rafters and highly-paid western law firms generate vast profits for curating Saudi’s reputation, children in places like Nepal grow up without their fathers and never even learn how they died,” he mentioned.
Human Rights Watch was informed by FIFA that it intends to set up a workers’ welfare system that will include mandatory standards and enforcement procedures for World Cup-related construction and service provision in Saudi Arabia.
“We are convinced that the measures implemented to ensure construction companies respect the rights of their workers on FIFA World Cup sites can set a new standard for worker protection in the country and contribute to the wider labor reform process, helping to enhance protections for workers on World Cup sites and beyond,” it said in a letter.
However, according to Human Rights Watch, no additional information about the welfare system’s operation was provided.
“Saudi authorities, FIFA, and other employers should ensure that all migrant worker deaths, regardless of perceived cause, time, and place, are properly investigated and that families of deceased workers are treated with dignity and receive fair and timely compensation,” the group stated.
The BBC has contacted the Saudi government for comment.
By Najat Adamu
