FIFA NEWS: FIFA to discuss workers situation in Qatar with Amnesty International

Monday March 14, 2022

FIFA will welcome a delegation of Amnesty International (AI) on Monday, 14 March 2022 at the Home of FIFA in Zurich to discuss the situation of migrant workers in Qatar in connection with the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.

The meeting will provide the opportunity for Amnesty to handover a petition calling on FIFA to address this matter and will be followed by a discussion with experts from FIFA and its local partner in Qatar to look at the progress achieved so far and the challenges that still remain.

“We very much welcome the ongoing engagement with Amnesty International and are always open to transparently and constructively discussing and addressing any concerns that our stakeholders may have. We remain fully committed to ensuring the protection of workers engaged in the delivery of the World Cup, and we are confident that the tournament will also serve as a catalyst for broader positive and lasting change across the host country.” said FIFA’s Chief Social Responsibility & Education Officer Joyce Cook.

“As widely recognized by international expert organizations, the World Cup has already contributed significantly to improved labour conditions in the region and it is clear that Qatar is on the right track having introduced sweeping labour reforms and making substantial progress, in what has been a comparatively very short period of time”.

As widely recognised by the ILO, ITUC, BWI and other international expert organisations, the FIFA World Cup has already contributed significantly to an improvement of labour conditions in Qatar, with heightened standards set by the local World Cup organisers, and wider legislative change introduced in the area of workers’ rights.

The meeting with AI and labour experts will look at the current status of those reforms and the continued work that remains for those changes to be fully implemented across the labour market.

Following recent exchanges with AI, the discussion will especially focus on the situation of workers in the service sector, particularly the hospitality sector.

With the tournament approaching and the scale of construction work gradually decreasing, FIFA and its local partners workers’ welfare-related efforts have increasingly shifted towards this area, which will play a key role during the competition.

This has involved the development of an audit and inspection programme for the hospitality sector as well as due diligence measures for service companies deployed on FIFA competition sites.

The exchange with AI and labour experts will allow to discuss those initiatives in detail as part of FIFA’s ongoing engagement with human rights and labour organisations ahead of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.

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