As Saudi Arabia celebrates its colossal win to host the 2034 men’s World Cup, not everyone is so jubilant. The irony that FIFA announced this news just days ahead of International Migrants Day won’t be lost on the tens of thousands of migrant workers travelling to the Gulf Kingdom to build 15 football stadiums and 185,000 luxury hotel rooms.

Undoubtedly, the Gulf Kingdom is already looking to South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Africa to source low-paid labour. The hosting of the FIFA World Cup by Qatar in 2022 did start to lift the lid on rampant abuse of migrants to the region, but still, the human stories of these workers - who will construct the football stadiums, staff hotels and restaurants, and provide security for football fans and teams  – too often goes untold.

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has tracked* abuse of migrant workers globally since the beginning of 2022. While only accounting for 6% of the global population, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region makes up a staggering 33% of all migrant worker abuse cases in our database, with 94% of MENA abuse cases taking place in the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Now home to over 24 million migrant workers, the GCC economies have profited from low-wage labour migration since the oil boom of the 1960s. Those profits have not been shared equitably.

Looking back at the most recent three years of data, wage theft is reported by migrants in nearly half of all cases. In one instance, a 35 year old Bangladeshi electrician who found himself working on a construction site, driven to raise money for his mother’s medical bills, ended up being owed over USD16,000 after his employer paid him irregularly. Illegal and extortionate recruitment fee-charging, often the root cause of so many subsequent exploitative situations, occurs in a quarter of cases, with workers reported being charged anywhere up to USD4,000 to obtain work, falling into crippling debt to do so.

Intimidation and physical violence in the workplace is all too commonplace, with workers who headed to Saudi describing employers who filed absconding charges against them to avoid paying their wages. Most egregious of all, however, are the cases where workers died - either on worksites or in labour camps. Some were denied medical treatment, others died by suicide after enduring crushing conditions.

Families dispute death certificates, saying healthy relatives who departed were at risk of heat stress in the Kingdom’s scorching temperatures, but employers gave them no explanation for loved ones’ deaths. Extremely long working hours, restrictions to freedom of expression, contract substitution and inhumane living conditions are all also the norm for migrants in Saudi Arabia. Further, in over a third cases, workers experienced barriers to accessing remedy and legal justice. Those who spoke up did so at great personal cost – including detention and deportation.

This is the daily experience of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, including those toiling in pursuit of mega-projects like NEOM and Aramco Stadium, touted by the Saudi government as symbols of the country’s development.

Multinational companies seeking to cash in on a Saudi World Cup must be alert to these risks. Construction workers are impacted in a quarter of cases we track, reflecting the dominance of the Saudi construction industry and its status as disproportionately risky for migrants’ rights. Cleaning, maintenance and security staff are impacted in a fifth of cases, and will be on the frontline welcoming fans and footballers in ten years’ time. Moreover, our data reveals Saudi-headquartered companies to be among the most opaque globally, with only 3 of 29 responding to our outreach in the last five years.

Over the coming months and years, the Resource Centre will continue to surface allegations of migrant worker abuse and hold companies to account where they are linked to exploitation in Saudi Arabia. The allegations we uncover should be a serious red flag for any company considering expanding or entering the market. The financial benefits of Saudi 2034 are huge – for FIFA, sponsors, local and multinational companies – but it is set to come at a devastating price for some of the world’s most vulnerable workers.

Isobel Archer is Senior Researcher, Labour and Migrant Worker Rights, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

* The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre’s Global Migrant Workers Allegations Tracker relies on publicly available information to identify cases of corporate abuse. We collect information on countries of origin and destination, abuses reported by workers, global supply chains linked to the cases and company responses.