It’s a strong title. “Revelations : 6 500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since being awarded the World Cup”. From the first paragraph of the investigation of the Guardian*the authors refer to a “shocking figure”. It was the 21st February 2021. Since then, this figure has been repeated at least 400 000 times, just on Twitter, according to calculations* of an academic specializing in digital technology.
the Guardian does not come out of nowhere with its figure: for lack of satisfactory data from the Qatari equivalent of INSEE, it approached embassies (Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan), NGOs (Bangladeshi, Nepalese) to estimate the total number of migrant workers who died between 2011, a few days after the attribution of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar in December 2010, and 2020. This leads to an average of 12 deaths per week for these five nationalities alone, which represent the bulk of the workforce imported by the emirate, which has become an open-air construction site to host the most important sporting event on the planet. And again, the authors point out, “the total of deaths is much higher, because we have not counted the figures of countries with many nationals in Qatar such as the Philippines or Kenya”.
On the Qatar side, the calculations do not give the same thing at all. The emirate recognizes 37 dead among the employees working on the World Cup stadiums, including “three are directly related to their work”. It would obviously be very simplistic to oppose the 6 500 dead from Guardian to the 37 of the supreme committee. First because we are not talking about the same thing : the British daily was based on the deaths of immigrant workers, when the Qatari authorities only count accidents on stadium sites. The Qatari civil registry, which publishes annual data on this page*, totaled 17 000 deaths among foreign nationals since 2010 : “While each death is shocking, the death rate within these communities is within the norm for the size and demographics of this population”argued the government in its right of reply* published in Amnesty International’s annual report last year.
The problem is that it is not possible to go into more detail with the data provided by Qatar. “We are faced with a really very high rate of unexplained deaths in the country”points to franceinfo Nick McGeehan, of the NGO FairSquare, who has made this cause his hobbyhorse. “Thereby, 60% of recorded deaths are due to cardiac arrest or natural causes.” Surprising, for a population of young and rather healthy workers – they must pass a medical examination before being allowed to enter the country – compared to the locals, whose obesity rate is increasing year after year. “That’s sixty times the rate one would expect, criticizes the university. It should be 1% normally.”
Review Cardiology* published a study conducted on 1 300 certificates from Nepalese migrant workers, who died in Qatar between 2009 and 2017. Half of the deaths were attributed to a cardiovascular problem, three times the rate medical specialists expected. One of the study’s authors, Tord Kjellstrom, told Australian channel SBS* that many of these deaths “could have been avoided” if the workers had not been forced to work in extreme climatic conditions.
In 2007, 2017 and then 2021, Qatar enacted laws prohibiting high-risk professions from working at midday, texts deemed insufficient by NGOs*, the mercury easily exceeding 30°C at 7 morning hours in August in Doha. “Obviously, when you die, it’s because of a heart or respiratory problem”criticizes Professor David Bailey, member of the working group on death certifications at the WHO, quoted by Amnesty International. “‘Natural reasons’ are not a sufficient explanation.”
The Qatari authorities limit themselves to ensuring that their data are in line with what is expected. The International Labor Organization (ILO) has plunged into it, and notes in a recent report : “The overall death toll among migrant workers in Qatar is between 2 000 and 2 400 every year for the past decade. If the data is categorized by gender, age, cause of death, month, etc., it does not specify whether the death occurred in the workplace or not.”
So, credible, this order of magnitude of 6 500 dead among migrant workers ? No NGO specializing in the issue fundamentally questions it. This data overwrites a previous one : in 2013, the report of the International Confederation of Trade Unions (Ituc, in English, which includes the CGT, FO, CFDT, etc.) entitled The Case Against Qatar* advanced the number of 1 200 deaths between 2011 and 2013, again based on data compiled by the embassies of India and Nepal. A figure to be taken with caution: it does not include other countries that are major suppliers of labour. And it is limited to the construction sector – not just stadiums, but all the buildings and infrastructure erected in the emirate’s growth frenzy, which had certainly started long before the World Cup.
The Indian government had reacted to this figure, notes the BBC* : “Given the large size of our community [au Qatar]this figure is rather normal.” A sign that at the time, the info had not panicked the communicators of Fifa and the emirate, the Qatari government had unveiled * the figure of 964 deaths among migrant workers from Nepal, India and Bangladesh between 2012 and 2013.
But in 2015, the tone changed. At that time, the emirate issued a press release* to refute the figures of the Washington Post*. The American daily had taken over the estimate of 4 000 immigrant workers who could die by the start of the World Cup, from the Ituc report (PDF, p.14*). Figure which, as we have seen, has since been significantly revised upwards. Already at the time, the line of the emirate is to deplore that the newspaper compares this figure * with the only worker who died during the construction of the infrastructure of the London Games. “A wiser comparison would have been to suggest that every migrant worker who died in the UK between 2005 and 2012 lost their life on the altar of the Olympics,” then points to Qatar.
Finally, what to think of this figure of 6,500 dead ? Admitted as imperfect by its authors, achieving consensus, for lack of anything better, with NGOs and activists, criticized in its interpretation by Qatar and Fifa… and above all very misunderstood in public opinion, not helped by the many articles linking all these deaths only to poor working conditions on the construction sites of new World Cup stadiums (like here*, here*, here* or here*.).
We’re donating all profits made from Lost Lager sold during the World Cup to causes fighting human rights abuses. pic.twitter.com/5OTA9Gn71G
—BrewDog (@BrewDog) November 7, 2022
So much so that the beer brand BrewDog found it clever to launch a marketing campaign presenting it as “the anti-sponsor of the World Cup”while denouncing “that in Qatar it is acceptable that 6 500 workers die to build your stadium” and by ensuring that all of its profits during the World Cup are donated to associations defending human rights. Noble cause… but erroneous demonstration.
* Links followed by an asterisk are in English.