HRW slams Qatar migrant worker negligence

CAIRO – 27 September 2017: Due to the overwhelming humidity and heat and the continuing negligence by Qatari authorities, thousands of Qatar-based migrant workers’ lives are at risk, according to a statement made on Wednesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The statement also cites Humidex’s last summer report on the intolerable weather conditions faced by the migrant workers at the 2022 World Cup venues and the construction sites, and who primarily come from Asian and African countries.

Of 520 labor deaths, 385 were from Bangladesh, India and Nepal, and those deaths were "neither explained nor investigated,” according to HRW, who urged FIFA to pressure the authorities to protect up to a million migrant workers.

Nicholas McGeehan, researcher at HRW, said that FIFA’s 2022 World Cup organizing committee and Qatari authorities deliberately “obscure the underlying cause of deaths and make it impossible to determine whether [the workers’ deaths] may be related to working conditions, such as heat stress,” accusing them of “willful abdication of responsibility,” The Guardian reported Wednesday.

The extreme climate in the Gulf, measured against the Wet Bulb Global Temperature and the Humidex system, makes working at almost any time of day or night in July, August and the first half of September dangerous, McGeehan said.