The Hypocrisy World Cup? FIFA sponsors silent on Qatar abuses

62 workers may lose their lives for each game played during Qatar’s 2022 World Cup, a tournament likely to be sponsored by FIFA partner companies Coke, VISA, McDonald’s, Adidas, Kia and Hyundai. Without sponsorship, this multi-billion dollar tournament couldn’t take place.

There has been almost no pressure from FIFA to fix the unfolding human rights crisis around the Qatar World Cup, but nor have the main sponsors taken a stand, despite their professed commitment to human rights and workers’ welfare. We’ve been working with SKINS Official Non-Sponsor and New FIFA Now to call on them to live up to their own standards.

Most sponsors commit themselves to respecting the UN Declaration of Human Rights – which guarantees the right to join a union – and have specific policies banning forced labour and slavery in their supply chains. However, none of them seem to have considered that paying FIFA to host a tournament built on slave labour goes against everything they claim to believe in.

As a customer or potential customer of these multinational companies, can you help us pressure them to apply their own ethical standards to how they spend their sponsorship funding?

We know money talks in FIFA. If one of these sponsors were to speak up it would be hugely influential in guiding FIFA and Qatar into ensuring that labour standards for people preparing the country to host the World Cup meet international standards of safety, decency and human rights.

TAKE ACTION: Email FIFA’s key sponsors now