Saudi Arabia World Cup bid report accused of ‘whitewashing’ rights abuses

A report by the Saudi arm of a global law firm on Saudi Arabia’s 2034 Fifa World Cup bid has “whitewashed” the Gulf kingdom’s record of exploiting and suppressing the rights of migrant workers, rights groups have claimed.

AS&H Clifford Chance was commissioned to independently assess the human rights implications of the bid, but the report “contains no substantive discussion of extensive and relevant abuses in Saudi Arabia”, according to a statement released by 11 organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The Saudi Arabian Football Federation, which commissioned the report, has submitted it to Fifa as part of its bid to host the tournament.

As the sole bidder for the 2034 World Cup, Saudi Arabia is almost certain to be named the host by Fifa later this year.

Calling the report “shockingly poor”, James Lynch, co-director of human rights group FairSquare, said AS&H Clifford Chance had “helped to remove a key final stumbling block” to awarding the tournament to Saudi Arabia, while ALQST for Human Rights, a Saudi Arabian diaspora organisation, said it served to “whitewash the reality of abuse and discrimination faced by Saudi Arabia’s citizens and residents”.

The report makes little mention of the well-documented and widespread exploitation of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, who will play a key role in building the infrastructure and providing the services needed for the tournament, and who are often subject to a raft of abuses, including the non-payment of wages, false contracts, illegal recruitment fees and sudden deportation.

Martha Waithira, a former domestic worker in Saudi Arabia and an investigator for the human rights group Equidem, said: “Hundreds of thousands of people expected to arrive in Saudi Arabia to build stadiums and clean hotels ahead of the World Cup are at great risk of severe exploitation and even death,” she said. “How can these realities have escaped AS&H Clifford Chance’s attention?”

Under terms agreed between Fifa and the Saudi Arabian Football Federation, AS&H Clifford Chance limited its assessment to only those human rights instruments that Saudi Arabia had ratified and that were deemed to apply “to the hosting and staging” of the World Cup. As a result, it makes no mention of the systemic human rights abuses endured by Saudi citizens and foreign nationals, which include the imprisonment of women’s rights activists and dissidents, severe restrictions on freedom of expression and the execution of at least 200 individuals in the first nine months of 2024.

Fifa said it was implementing a “thorough bidding process” for the 2034 World Cup and would publish an evaluation report on the bid ahead of a meeting of the Fifa Congress on 11 December.

AS&H Clifford Chance and the Saudi Arabian Football Federation did not respond to a request for comment.