Winning at the World Cup
| DOI | 10.1177/0924051918771228 |
| Date | 01 June 2018 |
| Published date | 01 June 2018 |
| Author | Daniela Heerdt |
| Subject Matter | Column |
Column
Winning at the World Cup:
A matter of protecting
human rights and sharing
responsibilities
Daniela Heerdt
Tilburg Law School, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands
On 14 June 2018, Russia’s national football team will play against Saudi Arabia for the opening
match of this year’s football World Cup held in Russia. In the subseque nt month, more than
3 billion people are expected to follow this mega-sporting event (MSE) on television.
1
What the
people behind their screens will see are state-of-the-art stadiums with the newest technology, each
costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
2
What most of the viewers are not aware of, however, is
that during the building of these stadiums tens of thousands of workers were exposed to severe
human rights violations.
3
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other human rights groups documen-
ted the structural exploitation of workers, including non-payment or severe delays in payment of
wages, working in unsafe conditions leading to injuries, and the death of 17 workers, as well as
forced illegal work due to lack of employment contracts and other documentation.
4
Lack of proof
of any employment relation made it extremely difficult for workers to complain about these
exploitative practices. If workers ma naged to file a complaint, they were threat ened by their
employers with retaliation and non-payment of wages.
5
Journalists and human rights advocates
Corresponding author:
Daniela Heerdt, Tilburg Law School, Tilburg University, Warandelaan 2, Tilburg, 90153 Netherlands.
E-mail: D.M.Heerdt@uvt.nl
1. FIFA, ‘2014FIFA World Cup
TM
Reached 3.2Billion Viewers, One Billion WatchedFinal’ (FIFA - Media Release,2015)
lion-watched–2745519.html> accessed 28 December 2017.
2. Jim Powell and Nick Ames, ‘Russia 2018 World Cup: the Complete Guide to All the Stadiums’ The Guardian (2018)
venues> accessed 14 February 2018.
3. Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, ‘Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup’ accessed 14 February 2018.
russia-2018-fifa-world-cup> accessed 14 February 2018.
4. Human Rights Watch, ‘Red Card - Exploitation of Construction Workers on World Cup Sites in Russia’ (2017) 2
5. ibid 27.
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights
2018, Vol. 36(2) 86–92
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who tried to investigate and report on these conditions have been working under constant suspicion
and intimidation. Journalists have been arrested during their investigations, held in detention and
faced with criminal charges.
6
Human rights abuses as part of the game
Unfortunately, these stories of exploitation of workers on World Cup construction sites in Russia
are not isolated cases. In the past two decades, a proliferation of reports on human rights abuses
connected to the organisation of MSEs have highlighted that human rights abuses occur throughout
the entire lifecycle of these events.
7
Similar stories of exploitation of workers have been reported
and continue to pile up in relation to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The working conditions
on the construction sites are hazardous and inhuman, with workers being exposed to heat up to
50 degrees Celsius, often without breaks and access to drinking water. HRW reported that there
have been dozens of deaths related to heat and exhaustion.
8
The Guardian counted Nepalese
migrant workers dying at a rate of one every two days already in 2014.
8
In 2013, the International
Trade Union Confederation warned that before the first ball will be kicked at the 2022 World Cup
in Qatar, around 4000 workers will have died.
9
Almost 90%of Qatar’s population consists of migrant workers, with most of them active in the
construction sector.
10
More than half of all migrant workers are living in labour camps, which
provide squalid accommodation and poor sanitary standards.
11
Furthermore, the application of
Qatar’s ‘Sponsorship Law’, better known as the kafala system, increases the risk of exploitation of
migrant workers.
12
This system, which has its roots in a time-honoured Bedouin tradition that
originally regulated the treatment and protection of foreign guests,
13
deepens the dependency of
migrant workers on sponsors. The result is that employees cannot leave the country or switch
employers without being provided with a permit by their employer.
14
Revisions of the law in the
6. Jane Buchanan, ‘Russian Police Violently Arrest Critical Newspaper Editor’ (Human Rights Watch, 2017)
www.hrw.org/news/2017/11/07/russian-police-violently-arrest-critical-newspaper-editor> accessed 14 February 2018.
7. Institute for Human Rights and Business, ‘Striving for Excellence: Mega-Sporting Events and Human
Rights ’ (2013) df/2013-10-21_IHRB_Mega-Sporting-Events-Paper_Web.pdf> accessed 14
February 2018.
8. Human Rights Watch, ‘Qatar: Take Urgent Action to Protect Construction Workers’ (2017); Owen Gibson and
Pete Pattisson, ‘Death Toll among Qatar’s 2022 World Cup Workers Revealed’ The Guardian (2014)
www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/qatar-nepal-workers-world-cup-2022-death-toll-doha> accessed 16
January 2018.
8. ibid.
9. Internationaler Gewerkschaftsbund, ‘Qatar 2022 WorldCup Risks 4000 Lives, Warns International Trade Union Con-
federation’ (2013)022-world-cup-risks-4000?lang¼de > accessed 3 February 2017.
10. Jure Snoj, ‘Population of Qatar by Nationality in 2017’ (Priya Dsouza, 2017)
qatar-by-nationality-in-2017/> accessed 14 February 2018.
11. Leana Hosea, ‘Inside Qatar’s Squalid Labour Camps’ (BBC News, 7 March 2014)
middle-east-26482775> accessed 8 March 2018.
12. United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, ‘Consideration of Reports Submitted by States
Parties under Article 9 of the Convention - Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination’ (13 April 2012) UN Doc CERD/C/QAT/CO/13-16, para 15.
13. Azfar Khan and He´le`ne Harroff-Tavel, ‘Reforming the Kafala: Challenges and Opportunities in Moving Forward’
(2011) 20 Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 293, 294.
14. United Nations General Assembly, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, Franc¸ois
Cre´ peau’ (23 April 2014) UN Doc A/HRC/26/35/Add.1, paras 25-32.
Heerdt 87
past years made it illegal to confiscate passports of emp loyees and easier for them to switch
between employers. Nonetheless, confiscating passports is still a widespread practice, which
ultimately violates the employee’s right to freedom of movement.
15
The overall situation many
of the migrant workers are subject to in Qatar has been referred to as ‘forced labour’ and ‘modern
slavery’.
16
Furthermore, abuses of labour rights are not the only types of human rights violations that arise
in the context of hosting the FIFA World Cup, just as the World Cup is not the only MSE with
adverse human rights impacts. In total, more than 77,000 people living in and around Rio de
Janeiro have been displaced between 2009 and 2015 to make room for construction projects related
to the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.
17
In a number of cases, demolitions
of houses began while people or their belongings were still inside.
18
Not only residents but also
local vendors were affected by evictions due to economic exclusion zones that had been created in
and around MSE-venues. In the run-up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, street sellers have
been displaced from their usual vending sites, which for many of those people resulted in a loss of
livelihood.
19
Additional MSE-related human rights abuses are the result of a number of actions
taken by the hosting countries. Special event-related legislation adopted by hosting governments,
such as so-called ‘‘Olympic Acts’’, often lead to infringements of freedom of expression and the
right to protest. In an effort to maintain peace and security just before and during those events, local
police and other security forces tend to resort to excessive use of force, arbitrarily arrest and
criminalise homeless people and street children.
20
Blurred lines of responsibility
Those bidding and advocating for hosting MSEs have been arguing that the exceptionalism of
hosting such an event to some extent justifies human rights infringements.
21
However, the fact that
these violations have been occurring on a structural basis in connection with every MSE hosted in
the past decades stresses the need to find ways to counter these developments. The key challenge in
addressing these cases and holding the responsible actors accountable is that these events are
jointly organised and staged by a variety of actors, which creates highly complex governance
structures that are difficult to retrace. Sports organising bodies like the Fe´de´ration Internationale de
Football Association (FIFA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) set the requirements
15. United Nations General Assembly (n 13) para 32
16. United Nations General Assembly (n 13) para 26; Jonathan Liew, ‘World Cup 2022: Qatar’s Workers Are Not
Workers, They Are Slaves, and They Are Building Mausoleums, Not Stadiums’ The Independent (2017)
www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/international/world-cup- 2022-qatars-workers-slaves-building-mausoleums-sta
diums-modern-slavery-kafala-a7980816.html> accessed 15 February 2018.
17. World Cup and Olympics Popular Committee, ‘Mega-Events and Human Rights Violations in Rio de Janeiro Dossier -
Rio Olympics: the Exclusion Games’ (2015) 20 accessed 3 February 2017.
ComiteRio2015_ENG_web_ok_low.pdf> accessed 2 April 2017.
18. Tom Philipps, ‘Rio World Cup Demolitions Leave Favela Families Trapped in Ghost Town’ The Guardian (2011)
19. Megan Corrarino, ‘‘‘Law Exclusion Zones’’: Mega-Events as Sites of Procedural and Substantive Human Rights
Violations’ (2014) 17 Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal 180, 180, 187.
20. Lucy Amis and John Morrison, ‘Mega-Sporting Events and Human Rights—A Time for More Teamwork?’ (2017) 2
Business and Human Rights Journal 135, 137.
21. Corrarino (n 19) 182–183.
88 Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 36(2)
according to which these events have to be delivered. Host countries commit to those requirements
and create the indispensable preconditions by adopting laws, giving orders and issuing permits.
The local organising committees are responsible for following up on the commitments and hiring
the necessary contractors , which range from city planne rs, architects and logistics e xperts to
construction firms, manufacturers of sporting goods and other event-related merchandise, food
suppliers, hospitability firms and event organisers, including their own sub-contractors.
22
Other
involved parties are national and international broadcasting firms, as well as recruitment agencies
for securing the availability of workers. The entire process is financially supported by national and
international corporate sponsors, such as McDonald’s and Budweiser in case of this year’s FIFA
World Cup.
23
Under international human rights law, the first reaction is to call upon the responsibility of the
hosting country, since states are n ot only responsible for respectin g, protecting and fulfilling
human rights but also for preventing third parties from abusing human rights on their territory.
Hence, any violations occurring in the context of delivering a mega-sporting event like the FIFA
World Cup should be dealt with under domestic laws of the hosting country. The unfortunate
reality is, however, that more and more of these ev ents are being awarded to countries with
questionable human rights reputation and even to countries for which poor human rights protection
has been well-known in advance. Even for countries with more positive human rights records, the
burdensome conditions that come with hosting such an event, both legally and politically, makes it
increasingly difficult to live up to their human rights obligations. Moreover, the approach of only
calling upon the responsibility falls short of addressing the real issue at stake: the fact that those
violations are the result of complex collaboration between, and various contributions of, the
multiple public and private actors involved in staging these events.
The entanglement of the actors and their operations, as well as the unique structures of power
between the variety of actors involved blur the lines of responsibility and accountability. This does
not only impede finding the actors responsible for human rights abuses but also the identification
of adequate accountability mechanisms. In practice, any att empt to establish responsibility or
accountability for MSE-related human rights violations have either been unsuccessful or only
addressed a fraction of the actors or types of violations involved. In a recent case befor e the
Handelsgericht Zu
¨rich, a coalition of national and international trade unions together with a
migrant worker from Qatar accused FIFA of being responsible for violating international human
and labour rights by awarding the 2022 FIFA World Cup to Qatar. The Swiss Court dismissed the
case arguing that the allegations were not accurate enough to come to a final judgment that can be
implemented, and that it is not the competent forum to deal with the alleged infringements of
human rights.
24
While the mediation procedure at the Swiss National Contact Point involving
FIFA and the Building and Woodworker’s International established a monitoring system for decent
work and safety in the workplace for migrant construction workers,
25
their living standards and the
exploitation coming from recruitment agencies was not addressed. Therefore, instead of leaving it
22. For a more elaborate overview of actors, see Amis and Morrison (n 20) 136.
23. Fe´de´ ration Internationale de Football Association, ‘2018 FIFA World Cup Russia
TM
- FIFA Partners’ (FIFA, 2017)
24. FNV, Bangladeshi Free Trade Union Congress, BWI & Nadim Shariful Alam v FIFA Handelsgericht Kanton Zu
¨rich
(3 January 2017).
25. Specific Instance regarding the Fe
´de
´ration Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) submitted by the Building
and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) - Final Statement Swiss National Contact Point (2 May 2017).
Heerdt 89
up to the hosting country or home country of the sports governing bodies involved, establishing
responsibility and accountability for MSE-related human rights abuses should be based on an
inclusive approach that takes the contribution of all actors into account. The concepts of shared
responsibility and shared accountability as recently developed under international law provide a
useful conceptual basis for such a framework.
26
The main idea that responsibility and account-
ability is shared between a multiplicity of actors that all contributed to a single harmful outcome, as
well as that legal responsibility is established separately and distributed among more than one of
the contributing actors, is reflective of the scenario we are facing with mega-sporting events.
27
Each case of human rights violations directly or indirectly linked to the event is a harmful outcome
of various contributions by multip le private and public actors, based o n which responsibility
should be shared and distributed among all actors involved.
Responsibility as team effort
Establishing a shared responsibility and accountability framework for MSE-related human rights
abuses certainly comes with a number of challenges. For one, it has to account for the varying
nature of actors and their contributions. While some actors directly cause certain human rights
abuses, such as construction firms, others are indirectly related to the abuses through financial
contributions and facilitating certain operations, which is applicable to sponsors and legislative
acts by host governments, or through requiring those operations to be carried out according to
certain standards, which is what FIFA and the IOC do. In addition, a shared responsibility and
accountability framework has to serve the different human rights obligations and responsibilities
inherent to the various actors involved. Arguably, all actors have certain obligations related to
human rights, as human rights obligations do not only exist on the international level but also form
part of national legal systems in various ways. Whereas private parties are generally bound by the
laws of their home countries and have to abide by domestic laws in the country they are operating,
state actors have obligations under international human rights law. In addition, corporate actors
involved in the MSE business have the responsibility to respect human rights as stipulated by the
United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
28
It has been argued that this
responsibility also extends to sports governing bodies,
29
leading to an express acceptance of this
responsibility by FIFA and a more indirect acceptance by the IOC.
29
26. Andre´ Nollkaemperand Dov Jacobs, ‘Shared Responsibility in International Law: a Conceptual Framework’ (2013) 34
Michigan Journal of International Law; Arne Vandenbogaerde, Towards Shared Accountability in International
Human Rights Law: Law, Procedures and Principles (Intersentia 2016).
27. Vandenogaerde (n26) 41; Andre´ Nollkaemper and others, The Practice of Shared Responsibility in International Law
(Cambridge University Press 2017) 3.
28. United Nations Human Rights Council, ‘Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on the Issue of
Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises, John Ruggie’ (21 March 2011) UN Doc
A/HRC/17/31.
29. Institutefor Human Rights and Business- Mega Sporting Events,‘White Paper 1.2 SportsGoverning Bodies andHuman
Rights Due Diligence’ (2017)
governing-bodies> accessed 6 February 2017; Fe´de´ration Internationale de Football Association, ‘FIFA’s Human
Rights Policy’ (2017) ument/affederation/footballgovernance/02/89/33/12/fifa
shumanrightspolicy_neutral.pdf> accessed 11 June 2017; International Olympic Committee, ‘Host City Conctract
Principles Games of the XXX III Olympiad in 2024’ (2017)
elections/Host_City_Contract_Principles.pdf> accessed 8 March 2018.
90 Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 36(2)
Furthermore, while a framework for establishing shared responsibility and accountability for
MSE-related human rights violations does not have to be rooted in international law, any efforts to
address the challenges and develop such a framework should nonetheless be taken as joint efforts
on the international level, for two reasons. First, addressing MSE-related human rights challenges
goes beyond the capacity of any one of the actors involved.
30
Neither the respective sports
governing body, nor the hosting country, nor any other actor involved is capable of holding a
multiplicity of actors accountable for their joint but diverse contributions to human rights viola-
tions. Second, the various corporate actors involved, as well as the workers hired, represent
numerous different nationalities regulated under various jurisdictions, which requires an approach
that goes beyond the limits of the domestic legal system of the hosting country. Furthermore, MSEs
like the FIFA World Cup are true international events, enjoying international prestige and char-
acter. Billions of people around the world follow the competitions. This international attention and
involvement makes any harmful consequences that arise out of the organisation of these events a
concern for the international community as a whole.
To a certain extent, some traces of a shared responsibility and accountability approach can
already be observed in the context of human rights issues provoked by delivering MSEs. In a joint
effort to address the issue of labour rights violations connected to this year’s World Cup, FIFA,
Russian authorities, and representatives of trade unions worked together to set up a monitoring
programme for labour conditions on World Cup construction sites. Certainly, the system has been
criticised for being not effective enough in terms of its limited reach and lack of measurable
results.
31
However, similar efforts in Qatar eventually brought about positive change in domestic
labour law, which reveals that these initiatives are a step in the right direction and that those actors
involved increasingly become aware of their share of responsibility.
Changing the rules of the game?
While these developments demonstrate that several stakeholders indeed promote and practice a
shared responsibility approach for addressing MSE-related human rights challenges, it remains to
be explored if existing responsibility or accountability mechanisms can adapt or if new mechan-
isms are needed to apply this approach. In fact, a shared responsibility and accountability frame-
work can take a variety of forms, ranging from judicial to non-judicial mechanisms, from
transnational to international regulation, and be categorised as responsibility, accountability, or
liability frameworks. On all possible routes, challenges will be encountered. One of the main
problems with judicial mechanisms is their traditional focus on individual and exclusive responsi-
bility. Casesinvolving multiple wrongdoerssharing responsibilitychallenge courts and other judicial
dispute resolution mechanisms on a substantial and procedural level to find rules for attributing and
29. Institutefor Human Rights and Business- Mega Sporting Events,‘White Paper 1.2 SportsGoverning Bodies andHuman
Rights Due Diligence’ (2017)
governing-bodies> accessed 6 February 2017; Fe´de´ration Internationale de Football Association, ‘FIFA’s Human
Rights Policy’ (2017) ument/affederation/footballgovernance/02/89/33/12/fifa
shumanrightspolicy_neutral.pdf> accessed 11 June 2017; International Olympic Committee, ‘Host City Conctract
Principles Games of the X XXIII Olympiad in 2024’ (2017)
elections/Host_City_Contract_Principles.pdf> accessed 8 March 2018.
30. Amis and Morrison (n 20) 140.
31. Human Rights Watch (n 4) 1.
Heerdt 91
apportioning different shares of responsibility. It is obvious though, that a shared responsibility and
accountability approach, similarly, holds ex ante and ex post benefits. It cannot only help to over-
come the hurdles faced byvictims in picking out separately the actors responsible for the harm they
suffered, but by clarifying responsibilities within the multi-stakeholder framework and creating
precedents, it can also contribute to preventing further violations for future events.
Without a doubt, there is still a long way to go before joint efforts based on shared responsibility
and accountability start bearing fruits. However, the steps taken up to this point depict a more
promising than hopeless scenario for the future of MSEs. After all, winning at the World Cup or
Olympic Games is about more than just scoring goals or winning medals and the ultimate goal
should be to eradicate their adverse human rights impacts to make use of their actual positive
potential in terms of promoting human rights and unifying different nations in a peaceful manner.
Sadly, this goal will remain in the far distance as long as billions of people continue to enjoy and
benefit from MSEs without being aw are of and addressing the human suffer ing these events
have caused.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential co nflicts of interest with respect to the re search, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
92 Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 36(2)
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