Nine migrant labourers working on the stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar died in 2019, the “supreme committee” organising the event has announced, bringing the number of deaths on World Cup projects to 34, since construction began six years ago. 31 of the deaths, including the nine who died last year, are classified as “non-work related”...Qatari law and the supreme committee’s worker welfare standards do not require companies to pay compensation for non-work related deaths. However, in October the Guardian revealed that Qatar rarely carries out post-mortems when a migrant worker dies, making it difficult to accurately determine the cause of death and establish if it was non-work related...[R]eforms, which were unveiled by the Qatari authorities and the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO), were expected to bring an end to the “kafala” system, under which workers are unable to change jobs without their employer’s permission, a practice some campaigners have described as a modern form of slavery. The ILO had said that the new laws, which it described as “a momentous step forward in upholding the rights of migrant workers”, would come into force in January, but the only measure to be implemented so far is the extension of an existing provision – that allows workers to leave the country without requiring their employer’s permission – to include groups such as domestic workers.Rights groups have called on Qatar to immediately implement the reforms...