More than three dozen Nepali civil society organisations have today published an open letter to FIFA President Gianni Infantino calling on him to “stop looking the other way” while migrant workers are denied compensation after having suffered human rights abuses in Qatar in the years leading up to the World Cup.  

The organisations have also displayed messages on billboards across Kathmandu, including at Tribhuvan International Airport where workers from Qatar often return without their wages and where the bodies of migrant workers who have died overseas are regularly repatriated. The billboards include the slogans “Meet The Hardest Working Team In Qatar” and “What’s A World Cup Without Fair Play?”

The civil society organisations’ letter highlights how migrant workers are unable to access a compensation fund set up by Qatar in 2018 to reimburse stolen wages if they’ve already returned to Nepal, and also how bereaved families are unable to receive compensation if the causes of their loved ones’ deaths are not investigated...