<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Republican Parliamentary Group in Congress has presented a Non-Law Proposal in which the Government is urged to pressure FIFA to prevent human rights violations during the future football World Cups of 2030 and 2034.</strong></h4> The motion, presented on December 11 by ERC MPs for debate in the Foreign Affairs Committee, recalls that FIFA has officially confirmed that Spain, Portugal and Morocco will host the 2023 World Cup and that Saudi Arabia will be the venue in 2034. “Saudi Arabia will be the second venue for a World Cup in the Middle East in four editions, after Qatar 2022,” and also “picks up the unfortunate witness of Qatar in terms of human rights,” states the motion According to the British newspaper The Guardian, ERC continues, “since FIFA awarded the organization of the World Cup to Qatar, until 2021, 6,500 migrant workers died in that country, many of whom were there in a semi-slavery regime working on the construction of the infrastructure necessary for the celebration of the World Cup of Football.” “This scandal was added to the already known discrimination against women and the LGTBIQ+ community in that country,” it adds. In addition, the motion continues, Amnesty International has warned, in a recent report, of “the great human risks derived from the construction and renovation of eleven stadiums for the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia.” “As noted, the sponsorship system based on labor exploitation has not been reformed, measures to prevent the death of workers have not been introduced and a minimum wage has not been established for non-nationals,” the text continues. “We once again have before us a potential humanitarian disaster in a country where more than 1.8 million migrant workers live in the construction sector,” it adds. All this occurs “in a country where human rights are continually violated, where torture has been normalized in interrogations and criminal sentences, where women are under the guardianship of their husbands and where discrimination against the LGTBIQ+ community is the order of the day,” denounces the Republican Group. “Despite the fact that FIFA was one of the first international sports organizations to incorporate human rights criteria in its process of choosing venues, none of the practices documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other entities have been an impediment to the granting of the celebration of the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia,” laments the Catalan independence party. In addition, it continues, “the choice of Morocco as co-host of the 2030 World Cup is also not exempt from risks for human rights,” since “homosexual relations continue to be legally persecuted today in Morocco, in the same way that there are severe limitations on freedom of expression and assembly.” However, the statement warns that “none of the three football federations organising this competition has expressed any intention to guarantee the human rights that are seriously threatened as a result of this World Cup”. For all these reasons, the Non-Law Proposal urges the Spanish Government to “establish strategies and binding commitments to prevent human rights violations in relation to the 2030 World Cup in Morocco, Spain and Portugal” and to “demand that FIFA suspend the selection of the venue for the 2034 World Cup until the protection of human rights and the working conditions of workers, especially those of migrant origin, is ensured”.
