The decision of FIFA to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar sparked a number of concerns and controversies regarding both Qatar's suitability as a host country and the fairness of the FIFA World Cup bidding process. Some media outlets, sporting experts, and human rights groups have criticised Qatar's record of human rights violations; Qatar's limited football history; the high expected cost; the local climate; and alleged bribery in the bidding process. Not all nations competing have put focus on concerns.
Criticism of human rights in Qatar focused on the treatment of migrant workers, women, and position on LGBT rights, leading to allegations of sportswashing. Others have cited Qatar's intense climate and lack of a strong football culture, as well as evidence of bribery for hosting rights and wider FIFA corruption. Boycotts of the event were declared by several countries, clubs, and individual players, while former FIFA President Sepp Blatter has twice said that giving Qatar hosting rights was a "mistake". Match attendance figures have also come under scrutiny as reported crowd attendances have exceeded stadium capacities despite games having visible empty seats. Over the past 5 years, the government has engaged closely with the ILO (international labour organisation), international trade union, NGOs, etc. The Guardian reported it all in its article published on 23 October 2022. The article included statements from workers involved in building infrastructure for the World Cup 2022. A survey among 1,000 low-wage workers found that 86% of respondents felt that the labour reforms had positively affected their lives. Now workers can negotiate for better conditions, and employers are incentivised to provide them in order to attract and retain talent. Legislation has also been introduced to the minimum wage, on protecting outdoor workers during the summer months, and on the election of migrant worker representatives within companies. Change to the kafala system has led to labour mobility. Another report by the United Nations claimed that "Qatar is changing. The new kafala system tranche of law will bring an end to kafala and put in place a modern industrial relations system" said Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation. This was published on October 17, 2019, before the world cup took place.
Incumbent FIFA President Gianni Infantino has defended the hosting of the tournament in Qatar. Others have suggested that Qatar's human rights record is better than those of Russia and China, nations which received less widespread criticism for similar issues when hosting major sporting events in the years prior to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The controversies surrounding the World Cup in Qatar have been described as a cultural conflict or "Clash of Civilizations" between authoritarian Islamic regimes and secular liberal democracies. The Qatari tournament is widely regarded as one of the most controversial FIFA World Cups in history.
Human rights concern
In a December 2021 interview with Al Jazeera, FIFA's secretary-general Fatma Samoura said that FIFA had developed a general framework to structure and guide the implementation of its human rights responsibilities and commitment, published in 2017, and that Qatar had implemented those recommendations. After a thorough investigation, the International Labour Organization, claimed the figures "misleading" and said they had been wrongly linked to World Cup sites without proper context in November 2022 via reported drafted by France24. Labor Minister Ali bin Samikh Al Marri said Qatar already has started a Workers' Support and Insurance Fund to help workers which successfully reimbursed US$320 million this year alone to victims through the Insurance Fund stated the ILO in November 2022. Furthermore, according to a statement by ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation) General Secretary Sharan Burrow, who had previously been a harsh critic of Qatar's labour laws, workers can now obtain justice in the country. She praised "the amazing change of the labour legislation in Qatar. In an article, which was published in September 2020, experts from the OHCHR (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) added, "We are very encouraged by the bold steps Qatar is taking to increase the protection of migrant workers' rights and ensure adequate living and working conditions for all."
LGBTQ issues
Due to Islamic sharia law, there are no LGBTQ rights in Qatar, with homosexuality, as well as campaigning for LGBTQ rights, criminalised. As such, when Qatar was selected to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the choice to do so in a restrictive nation saw much criticism, with several topics becoming the subject of controversy. The security of fans, as well as the homophobic football chants of certain nations, were points of discussion.
The main controversy came from a last-minute FIFA decision to hand out player punishments to European captains who had months earlier announced their intention to defy FIFA's equipment regulations on non-mandated armbands and continue wearing third-party rainbow-coloured ones (which began in 2020) in support of anti-discrimination; though not specifically in support of LGBTQ+ rights, nor targeting Qatar's lack, the rainbow symbol was deemed offensive to the hosts. Typically, kit violations incur a fine, which the teams had said they would pay; on the day of the first match involving one of the European teams, FIFA told the teams that they would receive a yellow card as a minimum.
Security officials at stadiums also confiscated items of rainbow clothing, flags featuring rainbows, whether Pride-related or not, and reportedly intimidated fans. American journalist Grant Wahl was briefly detained for wearing a T-shirt with a rainbow on it.
Pre-tournament
Stadiums Environmental impact Each stadium in Qatar requires 10,000 litres of water per day in winter months, when the tournament is taking place, to maintain the pitch. With little access to freshwater in the nation, the sourced water was saltwater, which has to be desalinated. The process damages the marine environment. Desalination plants in the Middle East also heavily rely on the use of fossil fuels. As well as the pitches at the stadiums, the organising committee grew and maintained a large farm of match-suitable fresh grass outside Doha, in case of turf damage. The need for so much desalination, and the oil and gas used to power the plants, have been criticised.
One of the eight stadiums, Stadium 974, was designed to be able to be disassembled so that it could be moved elsewhere, in an effort to counter the negative effect of requiring upkeep of unused stadiums. The large PR campaign promoting this was criticised by activists, as it overlooked the other stadiums being constructed in Qatar. Stadium 974 and the organising committee pledge that the tournament would be carbon neutral were also criticised as attempts to greenwash Qatar, the nation with the highest per-capita emissions, especially as carbon neutrality was planned to be achieved by planting trees to offset emissions generated by the tournament, rather than use alternative energies. Stadium 974, located at a port, does not have air conditioning; due to the climate of Qatar, the other seven stadiums do, with the systems running on fossil fuels.
Corruption There have been allegations of bribery or corruption in the Qatar's 2022 World Cup selection process involving members of FIFA's executive committee. There have been numerous allegations of bribery between the Qatar bid committee and FIFA members and executives, some of whom—including Sepp Blatter—were later recorded regretting awarding Qatar the tournament.
2011 In May 2011, allegations of corruption within the FIFA senior officials raised questions over the legitimacy of the World Cup being held in Qatar. According to then vice-president Jack Warner, an email has been publicised about the possibility that Qatar 'bought' the 2022 World Cup through bribery via Mohammed bin Hammam who was president of the Asian Football Confederation at the time. Qatar's officials in the bid team for 2022 have denied any wrongdoing. A whistleblower, revealed to be Phaedra Almajid, alleged that several African officials were paid $1.5m by Qatar. She later retracted her claims of bribery, stating she had fabricated them in order to exact revenge on the Qatari bid team for relieving her of her job with them. She also denied being put under any pressure to make her retraction. FIFA confirmed receiving an email from her which stated her retraction.
2014–15
In March 2014, it was alleged that a firm linked to Qatar's successful campaign paid committee member Jack Warner and his family almost $2 million. The Daily Telegraph reported that it understands that the U.S. FBI is investigating Warner and his alleged links to the Qatari bid.
On 1 June 2014, The Sunday Times claimed to have obtained documents including e-mails, letters and bank transfers which allegedly proved that Bin Hammam had paid more than 5 million US dollars to Football officials to support the Qatar bid. Bin Hamman and all those accused of accepting bribes denied the charges.
Later in June 2014, Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker gave an interview to German media in June 2014 stating that the allegations are being driven by envy and mistrust by parties who do not want the World Cup staged in Qatar, and that the country is not getting the respect it deserves over its efforts to hold the World Cup. He reiterated that the Qatari Emir strictly punishes and forbids instances of corruption and bribery with a zero-tolerance policy.
In an interview published on 7 June 2015, Domenico Scala, the head of FIFA's Audit And Compliance Committee, stated that "should there be evidence that the awards to Qatar and Russia came only because of bought votes, then the awards could be cancelled".
FIFA ethics investigation report In 2014, FIFA appointed Michael Garcia as its independent ethics investigator to look into bribery allegations against Russia and Qatar, the hosts for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup respectively. Garcia investigated all nine bids and eleven countries involved in the 2018 and 2022 bids and spoke to all persons connected to the bids and appealed for witnesses to come forward with evidence. At the end of investigation, Garcia submitted a 430-page report in September 2015. FIFA governing body then appointed a German judge Hans Joachim Eckert who reviewed and presented a 42-page summary of the report two months later. The report cleared Qatar and Russia of bribery allegations stating that Qatar "pulled Aspire into the orbit of the bid in significant ways" but did not "compromise the integrity" of the overall bid process.
Michael Garcia reacted almost immediately stating that the report is “materially incomplete” and with “erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions". In 2017, a German journalist Peter Rossberg who claimed to have obtained the report wrote in a Facebook post that the report "does not provide the proof that the 2018 or 2022 World Cup was bought" and stated that he would publish the full report bit by bit. This forced FIFA to release the original report as authored by the investigator Michael Garcia. The full report did not provide any evidence of corruption against the host of 2022 World Cup but stated that bidders tested rules of conduct to the limit. The report ended talks of a re-vote.
2020