Human Rights Watch said Wednesday that tomb abuses were being committed in construction sites in Saudi Arabia and warned that the risks for migrant workers could increase as the construction of stages for the 2034 World Cup rhythm collects the pace.
HRW said “dozens of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia that in horrible but avoidable accidents related to the workplace, including the fall of buildings, electrocution and even decapitation.”
The NGO, which has studied almost 50 cases of deaths in Saudi Arabia, said the Saudi authorities “had not been able to properly protect workers from preventable deaths, investigate security incidents in the workplace” include policies and benefits for survivors.
“The risks of occupational deaths and injuries are increasing even more as the Saudi government increases construction work for the 2034 World Cup, as well as other ‘Giga projects’,” HRW added.
The Gulf kingdom was the right to organize the 2034 World Cup in a FIFA Congress last December despite the concerns about their human rights history, the risks for migrant workers and the criminalization of same -sex relationships. He was the only candidate.
The NGO asked FIFA to ensure that all deaths related to work in Saudi Arabia are properly investigated and that accumulated families receive compensation.
– ‘Long and heavy’ –
FIFA has pledged to establish a welfare system of workers, which says “obligatory standards and application mechanisms applicable to all companies and workers involved in … construction and provision of services related to the World Cup.”
But HRW said that the world football governing body did not provide “details about concrete measures to prevent, investigate and compensate for deaths of migrant workers, such as thermal protection measures based on life risk or insurance.”
The NGO said that “FIFA is killing another tournament that will have serious human costs unnecessarily”, referring to the decision to grant the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.
Similar concerns about the well -being of Qatar workers before their host or international football exhibition tournament.
Amnesty International and other rights groups said that thousands of migrant workers died in the period prior to the 2022 tournament, he thought that Doha said that only 37 workers in World Cup projects and only three in work -related accidents.
HRW declared in his report that most deaths of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia are attributed to “natural causes” and, therefore, are investigated or compensated.
According to the figures provided by the NGO, for example, 74 percent or 1,420 deaths of Indian migrant workers recorded in the Indian embassy in Riyadh in 2023 were attributed to natural causes.
HRW added that “even death cases related to work categorized as such in the death certificate of a migrant worker sometimes are not compensated, since they should be in accordance with the Saudi Law and international labor standards.”
“In cases of migrant death that are compensated, the process is long and heavy,” the report said, providing an example of one of those compensation processes that play a decade to complete.
“My children are 11 and 13 years old. When my husband died, they were 11 months and two years old. If we had recovered compensation just after his death, he would have provided so much relief,” the wife of a deceased, who was not.
In response to the report, FIFA shared with AFP a letter that he sent last month of his secretary general Mattias Burialstrom.
The letter says that Saudi Arabia “in recent years has been strongly investing in the development of its society and economy,” using international companies.
Grafstrom points out that Saudi Arabia “has significant steps tasks to reform its labor laws since 2018”, including the abolition of parts of the Kafala system that links workers with their employers and introduces standardized contracts for workers.
The Saudi government, he says, has also committed to work with the International United Nations (ILO) Labor Organization “on the additional expansion and effective implementation of reforms.”
“In line with its human rights commitments, FIFA seeks to play its role in guaranteeing strong protections for workers employed by third parties in the construction of FIFA World Cup sites,” adds Grafstrom.
AFP has also contacted the Saudi government to comment.
