On the Precipice of the World’s Most Important Sporting Event in a Harrowing Time
What does the World Cup mean for today’s global community?
It’s November 4th. The 2022 World Cup begins in just over two weeks and news has just broken that Fifa has written to all 32 participating countries to “focus on the football.”
It’s an effort, I suppose, to ease the growing tension that, yes, this is in fact really happening.
While the world continues to recover from COVID-19; while fires continue to burn across Ukraine; while conspiracy theories threaten to undermine the future of U.S. elections; while Kyrie Irving refuses to apologize for anti-semitic social media posts; while enflamed energy costs and inflation hit record highs, Qatar is getting ready for kick-off.
We are two weeks away from the World Cup in a country that built its stadiums with the labor of some 30,000 migrant laborers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka — 6,500 of which have reportedly died since Qatar won its World Cup bid — and whose human rights record was already compromised by its stances on LGBTQ and women’s rights.
Now, thousands of foreign laborers, which make up roughly 85% of Qatar’s 3 million people, are being evicted from their homes in Doha in preparation…
