Saudi Arabia’s Bid to Host the FIFA World Cup 2034 Challenged Over Human Rights Issues: Amnesty

Sport & Rights Alliance (SRA) and Amnesty International stated that FIFA must stop the process of picking Saudi Arabia as the host of the 2034 World Cup unless major human rights reforms before the vote next month.

The FIFA World Cup is the most-watched athletic event with a massive social, political, and economic impact. It also has a long history of controversy, scandal, and human rights abuses.

In December 2024, 211 FIFA members will approve whether Morocco, Portugal, and Spain will host the 2030 World Cup and Saudi Arabia as the hosts of the 2034 tournament.

To be selected, they should follow strict requirements, which include safeguarding their workers’ rights, preventing discrimination, ensuring freedom of expression, and more.

Sport & Rights Alliance (SRA) and Amnesty International stated that FIFA must stop the process of picking Saudi Arabia as the host of the 2034 World Cup unless major human rights reforms before the vote next month.

In a recent report, Amnesty International and SRA stated that they had evaluated the human rights plan proposed by the bidding countries and concluded that the bid didn’t describe how they would meet FIFA’s human rights standards.

Saudi Arabia’s FIFA World Cup hosting documents ignored the country’s human rights violations like insufficient heat protections, unchecked wage theft, a ban on labor unions, and abusive visa sponsorship labor systems. FIFA is willingly ignoring the horrific human rights abuses in preparing for the 2034 World Cup.

The International Labour Organisation received a complaint about Saudi Arabia’s forced labor from the Building and Wood Workers’ International Union (BWI). 

The lawsuit stated that 193 migrant workers were facing various abuses, and tens of thousands of workers from two Saudi construction companies did not receive their wages, despite Saudi authorities claiming that they have made modifications to the Labour Law, violations like debt bondage, and abusive living and working conditions. 

Saudi Arabia signed several international treaties, like the Forced Labour Convention and its 2014 protocol, that it failed to enforce, according to the BWI’s lawsuit.

Since there were no expressions of interest before the FIFA deadline, Saudi Arabia will win to host the World Cup, which will be announced during the FIFA Congress.

However, one of the main concerns is LGBTQ discrimination in the kingdom, where people can be sentenced to death if found guilty of having same-sex sexual conduct.

Hammad Albalawi, head of Saudi Arabia’s World Cup bid unit, stated that LGBTQ fans are welcome and their privacy would be respected, pointing to the millions of fans who have visited Saudi Arabia for sporting events in recent years.

The goal is to have a competitive environment free of discrimination, so they are working with government partners to ensure that the law aligns with international commitments and implements necessary enhancements.

Saudi Arabia’s bid book stated they will build 15 stadiums for the World Cup, which will be finished by 2032, with 185,000 additional hotel rooms before the tournament.

That would require a vast number of migrant workers, but it has neither established a minimum wage for non-citizens nor introduced measures to prevent worker deaths.

It is similar to the worker’s death in Qatar, which hosted the 2022 World Cup.

Britain’s Guardian reported that at least 6500 migrant workers died after Qatar won the right to host the event, but the number was disagreed by the Gulf nation.

However, Saudi Arabia states in their bid book that they are committed to concerns against forced labor, child labor, and occupational safety and health.

Cockburn stated that Saudi Arabia’s human rights strategy failed to address the repression of free speech, where many people were given the death penalty for merely expressing themselves.

Saudi Arabia is spending billions to change their image from a country with strict religious restrictions and human rights abuses to a tourism and entertainment hub. However, it failed to win the UN Human Rights Council.