Paris boycotts FIFA World Cup 'fan zones' : Why are French cities protesting against the event?

There will be no broadcasting of the FIFA World Cup matches on the giant screens in public places or setting up of “fan zones” in Paris this time. The French capital is the latest addition to the list of cities in the country protesting against the alleged human rights violations of migrant workers and environmental violations in Qatar, which is hosting the FIFA World Cup 2022.

Which cities in France are protesting?

Local authorities in Marseille, Lille, Bordeaux, Reims, Nancy, Rodez, besides Paris have announced to boycott of the competition. The public authorities say that the move is a “last minute crisis of conscience.” Benoît Payan, the Mayor of Marseille, who also heads a leftwing and environmentalist coalition, said, “This competition has gradually turned into a human and environmental disaster, incompatible with the values we want to see conveyed through sport and especially football,” as per a report in The Guardian.

According to Associated Press, Pierre Rabadan, the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of sports, said that the decision against public broadcasting of matches is due to “the conditions of the organization of this World Cup, both on the environmental and social level.” In an interview with France Blue Paris, Rabadan said that “air-conditioned stadiums” and the “conditions in which these facilities have been built are to be questioned.”

Interestingly, the French capital’s football team — Paris Saint-Germain — has been owned by the Emir of Qatar – Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani – since 2011.

What are the alleged violations in Qatar?

Since Qatar was awarded the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals, there has been an outcry over violations of human rights in the emirate. The royal family of Qatar led by Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani is one of the richest in the world. However, under the country’s Kafala system, which ties employees to a specific employer, workers building the infrastructure for the World Cup have been abused, denied their wages and trapped in a system that they cannot escape from.

According to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Trade Union Confederation, there have been reports of workers could not change jobs or even leave the country without their sponsor's permission and "serious exploitation" of workers who have to sign false statements that they had received their wages in order to regain their passports. This, the international watchdogs say, has created a de facto form of slavery for the more than a million migrant workers living in Qatar.

Besides human rights, there have been reports of underreported carbon emissions and environmental hazards. Carbon Market Watch (CMW), a not-for-profit organisation which works closely with the European Union, has said that the Qatar World Cup “is failing to live up to promises on reducing its carbon footprint.”

While the organisers claimed that FIFA 2022 tournament in Qatar will be the first “carbon neutral” World Cup, CMW has said in its report that it found projected emissions underreported on examining the organisers’ plans. Being “carbon neutral” means that any emissions would be limited and offset, and CMW says that the carbon footprint created from building the seven new stadiums for the World Cup has been of “particular concern”.

How are FIFA and Qatar addressing the controversy?

When it comes to the environmental violations, FIFA rejected CMW’s analysis and allegations, stating that it would not be appropriate to calculate emissions for building the stadium based only on their use at the World Cup. It has added that there are “detailed legacy plans and business models” in place for using the stadiums after the tournament.

“The organisers have pledged to measure, mitigate and offset all Fifa World Cup 2022 greenhouse gas emissions while advancing low-carbon solutions in Qatar and the region. Thus, at no point has Fifa misled its stakeholders, as is claimed by the report,” a FIFA spokesperson reportedly said after the report came out earlier this year.

Vis-à-vis the allegations of human rights violations, the Qatar government has rejected the Guardian exposé which said that 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka had died in Qatar since it won its World Cup bid. These workers, the report says, were neither categorized by occupation nor place of work. The Qatari authorities said that the figure was misleading as not all the deaths recorded were of people working on World Cup-related projects. According to the government, the number of non-Qatari deaths is 15,021 between 2010 and 2019. This encompasses all ages, occupations and causes. However, Human Rights Watch has argued that because the data is neither disaggregated nor comprehensive, it is difficult to do any meaningful analysis of migrant worker deaths.