Doha-Sana
United Nations expert Tendai Ashyum has confirmed that foreign workers in Qatar are facing discrimination because of their nationality and are suffering from the prevalence of “racial and ethnic profiling”.
Amnesty International confirmed last September that the exploitation of foreign workers was continuing in Qatar, which failed to fulfill any of its promises to reform labor laws to improve the conditions of foreign workers working in the sheikhdom preparing to host the World Cup 2022.
"The enjoyment of human rights by many in Qatar is greatly influenced by their national origin and nationality," Ashyum, the organization's special rapporteur on discrimination, told AFP, explaining that foreign workers are often hired to do certain jobs so that women from Southeast Asia usually work as domestic workers. At home while South Asian men work in unskilled construction.
“Many low-income workers spend a large part of their working life in Qatar and face serious barriers to the full enjoyment of basic human rights.”
Profiling is widespread in the private and public sectors, it is assumed that men from sub-Saharan Africa are not clean, women are sexually permissible, and South Asian people are considered unintelligent, North American, European and Australian women are considered superior and whites are generally more capable and efficient.
Ashyum, who is also a professor of law at the University of California School of Law, said she had received reports of "widespread racial and ethnic profiling by police, traffic authorities and even by special security forces working in parks and shopping malls throughout the state." South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are denied entry because of their appearance. ”
Ashium will submit her final report on her visit to Qatar to the UN Human Rights Council in July 2020.
The situation of foreign workers in projects related to the World Cup 2022 has been criticized by many organizations, especially in terms of the conditions in which they work and their lack of rights, where reports of the death of many of them as a result of hard working conditions and practices similar to slavery in dealing with them.