We write to request information about the human rights due diligence process ahead of FIFA awarding the 2030 World Cup to Morocco, Portugal, and Spain with games in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay, and also clarify the bidding process for the 2034 World Cup.

Reforms to the bidding process were made because of corruption in World Cup bidding and serious human rights abuses, including discrimination against LGBT people and the unexplained and uninvestigated deaths of thousands of migrant workers who built the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup...

The 2030 and 2034 World Cup bidding process appears to have thrown out previous due diligence processes in place for the 2026 World Cup, in that it fails to engage with stakeholders or require human rights and environmental risks assessments.

Human Rights Watch along with members of the Sport & Rights Alliance, maintains contacts with human rights defenders who should be part of any human rights risk assessment for future World Cups, including consideration of the major human rights risks to athletes, fans, workers, journalists and others.

As we wrote in our February 2023 letter, Human Rights Watch is deeply troubled by how Saudi Arabia was chosen to host the December 2023 Club World Cup and the 2027 AFC Asian Cup, apparently without considerations of human rights playing a part. We are writing to ask how the Saudi Federation could reportedly become FIFA’s preferred candidate to host the 2034 World Cup, given Saudi Arabia’s poor track record of human rights and the arrest of peaceful critics and women’s rights defenders...

Human Rights Watch calls on FIFA to apply, clear, objective human rights criteria to all states for hosting both the men’s and women’s World Cup and other tournaments and for any major commercial sponsorships, including labor protections, press freedom, and nondiscrimination...