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The World Cup puts the spotlight on Qatar, but also brings attention to its human rights record and politics – 4 things to know

David Mednicoff, Chair, Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies, and Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Public Policy, UMass Amherst, The Conversation on

Published in Political News

Unusual, rapid growth like Qatar’s is a magnet for foreign contract workers worldwide. I enjoyed my opportunity to work there myself as a visiting professor and Fulbright scholar 15 years ago. Yet less privileged foreign workers can fare badly.

In Qatar and its oil-rich peers, control by a minority of citizens over millions of workers with fewer rights leads to discrimination and abuse. Human rights groups, journalists and migrant workers themselves have sought to change harmful workplace practices, such as withholding wages and forbidding unions.

Qatar’s summer heat, averaging 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius), can make working conditions especially dangerous for outside construction workers. Since it is hard to know whether the alleged worker deaths are due specifically to bad working conditions, work-related issues, or something else, exact mortality numbers have been disputed and may be prone to exaggeration. Yet no one doubts that conditions have been terrible for many of Qatar’s most vulnerable workers.

Other rights issues in Qatar have also attracted global attention. The conservative form of Islam that is part of Qatar’s identity allows little tolerance for LGBTQ rights. Human rights groups have documented detentions and other routine discrimination against LGBTQ people.

3. Yet Qatar has made major reforms

While workers’ rights have received appropriate Western media attention, Qatar’s direct efforts to respond to local and international activism are less known. Qatar enacted the most significant labor rights reforms in the Arab world in 2021.

 

Working with the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency that promotes fair and decent work worldwide, Qatar instituted a minimum wage of $275 per month, along with allowances for food and lodging. It also prohibited outdoor work during the peak of summer heat and eliminated many of the laws that gave employers control over their workers’ basic freedoms to leave their job or the country.

Because the reforms are recent, it is hard to know whether they represent important steps forward or incremental steps that will change little.

In any case, legislation in and of itself cannot remedy a complicated challenge involving a wide range of companies and other organizations that Qatar’s government does not control. Whether Qatar can and will enforce the new regulations consistently is one concern.

Most foreign migrants arrive in Qatar through foreign-based recruitment companies, which charge them to secure jobs. So even if Qatar tries to curb labor abuses, recruitment companies based in migrants’ countries of origin would still profit by charging workers expensive placement fees, for example. Such recruiters often work with multinational companies within Qatar to blunt the force of the kingdom’s recent reforms.

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