World football's governing body Fifa further incurred the wrath of human rights and environmental activists on Wednesday with the formal confirmation of Saudi Arabia as hosts for the 2034 World Cup and the staging of the 2030 event at venues in Europe, Africa and South America that will send dozens of football teams and thousands of fans across the globe for matches.
In a nod to the 100th anniversary of the tournament, the opening game of the 2030 World Cup will be held in the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo in Uruguay which hosted the inaugural event. The second and third games of the tournament will be played in Argentina and Paraguay respectively.
The rest of the matches will then unfold in stadiums in Spain, Portugal and Morocco where plans are underway to build a 115,000-seat stadium in Benslimane, 40km east of Casablanca.
"Fifa has proposed World Cups that are an ecological aberration," said Guillaume Gouze, of the Centre of Sports Law and Economics at the University of Limoges in France.
"Fifa has a moral responsibility to integrate climate concerns into its tournament plans."
Benja Faecks, of the non-governmental organisation Carbon Market Watch, which evaluates climate promises of major events, told the French news agency AFP that the 2030 tournament was an unfortunate geographic choice.
"When an event is spread over sites thousands of kilometres apart, teams and potentially hundreds of thousands of their loyal fans have to travel by plane," she added.
Fifa, set up in Paris in May 1904 to oversee international competition among eight European national football associations, has grown into a global body comprising more than 200 associations.
It earned 7.5bn dollars in revenue through four years of commercial deals tied to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. In the cycle leading up to the 2018 event in Russia, it raked in 6.5 billion dollars.
"With the exception of the games in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, for 101 games, the tournament will be played in a footprint of neighbouring countries in close geographic proximity and with extensive and well developed transport links and infrastructure," Fifa said in a statement about the 2030 tournament.
Concerns
Last month, the campaign group Human Rights Watch claimed that Saudi Arabia's bid failed to tackle alleged abuses of the 13.4 million migrant workers in the country.
Saudi Arabia aims to construct 11 stadiums and 185,000 hotel rooms for the month-long tournament as well as massive infrastructure upgrades covering airports, road and rail networks.
Last summer, the Building and Wood Workers’ International Union (BWI) filed a forced labour complaint against Saudi Arabia at the International Labour Organization (ILO). The complaint was based on cases of tens of thousands of workers with unpaid wages from two Saudi-based construction companies and testimony from 193 migrant workers who have faced a range of abuses.
Violations included confiscation of identity documents and poor working and living conditions despite Saudi authorities claiming that labour laws had been revised.
"Saudi Arabia’s World Cup hosting documents ignore the country’s egregious human rights violations, including inadequate heat protections, unchecked wage theft, the ban on labour unions and an abusive visa sponsorship labour system,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch.
“Fifa is wilfully blind to the country’s human rights record, setting up a decade of potentially horrific human rights abuses preparing for the 2034 World Cup.”
Twelve days ago, Fifa released an evaluation report incorporating an independent human rights context assessment carried out by the law firm AS&H Clifford Chance. The Fifa report said Saudi Arabia was considered "medium risk" for human rights.
Bid
"The Saudi bid presents a very strong all-round proposition, reflected in the results of the technical evaluation, which assesses the proposed infrastructure (both sporting and general) as well as its commercial potential," the Fifa report said.
In the prelude to the publication, a dozen human rights organisations - including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and FairSquare - queried the rigour of the assessment.
“The severe risks of hosting the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia are clear and well-known – without huge reforms, critics will be arrested, women and LGBT people will face discrimination, and workers will be exploited on a massive scale”, said Steve Cockburn, head of labour rights and sport at Amnesty International.
“It is incredible that AS&H Clifford Chance omitted such glaring risks from its assessment and scandalous that Fifa paved the way for them to do so.
"Fifa must now insist on a proper assessment and meaningful human rights strategy, or its flagship tournament will inevitably be tarnished by severe human rights violations.”
Concerns over human rights overshadowed the 2022 tournament in Qatar - the first World Cup to be held in the Middle East.
Similar issues will dog the second football fest even as authorities in Saudi Arabia strive for more credibility and less opprobrium with high-profile events such as a Formula One Grand Prix, heavyweight boxing contests and the women's end of season tennis championships.
"Based on clear evidence to date, Fifa knows workers will be exploited and even die without fundamental reforms in Saudi Arabia, and yet has chosen to press ahead regardless," Cockburn added.
"The organisation risks bearing a heavy responsibility for many of the human rights abuses that will follow. At every stage of this bidding process, Fifa has shown its commitment to human rights to be a sham.
"Fifa must urgently change course and ensure that the World Cup is accompanied by wide-ranging reforms in Saudi Arabia, or risk a decade of exploitation, discrimination and repression connected to its flagship tournament."
