Red Card For FIFA’s Saudi World Cup

No one can predict which team will win the Men’s World Cup soccer championship in 2034. But based on current conditions, we know the biggest losers will be the millions of migrant workers subject to egregious abuses while building stadiums, transit, infrastructure, and other facilities for host country Saudi Arabia over the next decade.

On December 11, the 211 national members of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) will hold a vote in an “Extraordinary Congress” to decide who will host the 2034 tournament. The conclusion is already known because Saudi Arabia is the only bidder and has received a glowing score from FIFA in the evaluation of its bid.

FIFA doesn’t disclose how much it profits from granting its flagship tournament to countries with dismal human rights records. Those most affected by this decision— Saudi Arabia’s 13.4 million migrant workers, Saudi citizens, players, fans and journalists—have no vote.

FIFA and its Saudi government partners boasted recently that Saudi Arabia’s evaluation score of 419.8 out of 500 is “the highest ever score in FIFA World Cup history.” The deeply flawed FIFA evaluation process further downplayed systemic human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia with a “medium risk” rating.

FIFA gave this “highest ever score” to a country with no labor unions, no press freedom, and a government that is deeply repressive and punishes any dissent.

“We cannot say that Saudi Arabia is a ‘medium risk’ country, given that it has become a pure police state,” said Lina al-Hathloul, Head of Monitoring and Advocacy at ALQST For Human Rights, whose sister Loujain was jailed and tortured for advocating for women’s right to drive.

This month FIFA leaders also rejected the organization’s own independent report that confirms FIFA “has a responsibility” to compensate families of thousands of migrant workers who died building FIFA’s last World Cup, in Qatar in 2022.

Like Qatar, Saudi Arabia operates under the abusive labor sponsorship system known as kafala, where migrant workers pay large recruitment fees, often have passports taken and wages stolen by employers, and cannot change jobs or leave the country freely. Labor unions, strikes and protests are banned. Saudi authorities do not adequately protect migrant workers from dangerous conditions such as extreme heat.

The unprecedented scale of Saudi World Cup plans makes the potential for labor rights catastrophes greater even than for the Qatar World Cup. The Saudi hosting documents promise to construct—in the deadly desert heat, as in Qatar—11 new and 4 refurbished stadiums,185,000 new hotel rooms, and to carry out airport, road and rail construction. This infrastructure deficit will rest entirely on the backs of migrant workers to build. Many of these World Cup projects will be accomplished with funding from the Saudi state-run $925 billion Public Investment Fund and from oil and gas behemoth Aramco, FIFA’s new major worldwide partner.

The hundreds of billions of dollars in construction come with a high human cost. A new Human Rights Watch report found that 884 migrant workers from Bangladesh died in Saudi Arabia between January and July 2024—a six month period. Eighty percent of these deaths were un-investigated, attributed to “natural causes,” and not eligible for compensation. Human Rights Watch wrote to FIFA President Gianni Infantino on November 4, 2024, documenting widespread labor abuses on giga-projects in Saudi Arabia that will be part of the World Cup infrastructure. FIFA has not responded.

Winning the right to host is an effort championed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has made clear that the FIFA World Cup is a centerpiece of the Saudi national sportswashing strategy to project a reformist image of the country, while covering up its human rights abuses. “If sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by 1 percent, then we will continue doing sportswashing,” the de-facto Saudi leader said in an interview with Fox News last year. “I don’t care.”

But FIFA should care. Awarding Saudi Arabia the World Cup violates FIFA’s own human rights rules. In 2016, facing a corruption crisis, FIFA put in place specific human rights standards for itself and countries hosting the games—including protections against forced labor. These reforms were supposed to keep the tournament away from the worst human-rights violators. FIFA also pledged “an ongoing due diligence process to identify, address, evaluate and communicate the risks of involvement with adverse human rights impacts,” promising to “make every effort to uphold its international human rights responsibilities.”

Yet not a single migrant worker, victim of human rights crimes, torture survivor, jailed women’s rights defender, or Saudi civil society member was consulted for FIFA’s supposedly independent human rights assessment. FIFA’s “Bid Evaluation Report” doesn’t even mention the historic forced labor complaint against the Saudi government filed by the trade union BWI at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in June of this year. A similar complaint about Qatar in 2014 spurred labor reforms in the country, although too late to help thousands of migrant workers who died.

In 2023, FIFA was forced to cancel the sponsorship it sold to the Saudi state-run tourism company “Visit Saudi,” after protests by women players. In October, more than 100 top women players published an open letter protesting FIFA’s lucrative sponsorship deal with the Saudi state oil giant Aramco. Already, two United States senators have called for FIFA to pick a different host for the 2034 World Cup.

FIFA needs to cancel the vote and back athletes and human rights over profiteering from Saudi sportswashing. Every sponsor, business, broadcaster, and national team associated with the Saudi World Cup will be tainted by widespread labor and other abuses unless wholesale, urgent human rights reforms are implemented. FIFA’s decision to award Saudi Arabia the 2034 World Cup is an unforgivable betrayal of basic human rights that risks migrant workers’ lives. It deserves a red card.