The 2022 FIFA World Cup will take place in Qatar from November 21 to December 18. But now, at the beginning of this international high mass for sports, more and more voices are being raised and calling for a boycott of this event.

Qatar has been particularly criticized for not respecting the human rights of the workers involved in building the infrastructure where the football matches will take place.

Unsustainable attacks on human dignity, individual freedoms, minorities and the environment were mentioned again and again.

Many petitions are circulating online calling for a boycott of the 2022 World Cup…

Over 6,000 dead for entertainment

Since 2010, several observers have particularly deplored thousands of deaths at the construction sites of seven huge indoor and air-conditioned stadiums to entertain football fans for a month.

Some sources, such as the British daily newspaper The guard on Tuesday February 23, 2021, estimates that at least 6,500 migrant workers have died of indifference since 2010, the year Qatar gained the right to organize the competition.

They were largely foreign workers with no rights or dignity, reduced to what amounts to modern day slavery.

The NGO Amnesty International recently reported in a documentary that these migrant workers “lived without water, without electricity, in overcrowded dormitories below 50 degrees. They work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for them labor law is just an illusion and forced labor is their everyday life.”

Boycott or allow?

Despite the scale of this humanitarian scandal, the NGO Amnesty International does not call for a boycott of this FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Surprised…

On the one hand, she decided to put pressure on the international football association FIFA, organizer of this competition, to set up a compensation program for violations of the rights of foreign workers.

On the other hand, given that Qatar is one of the richest countries in the world and “has not only the means but also the duty to act much better to protect migrant workers”, Amnesty International specifically recommended that the Qatari authorities:

• “to conduct a full investigation into the deaths of all migrant workers;
• improve the certification process in case of death to be able to identify the causes;
• Pay compensation to families when working and climatic conditions cannot be ruled out as having contributed to the death…”

The pressure and the recommendations would obviously have been welcomed on both sides and concrete answers would have followed. But even if it’s true, will it bring the dead back to life?

Canada, which qualified for this 2022 World Cup 36 years after its first World Cup, should it boycott it? To ask the question is to answer it…