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Sri Lankan construction workers in front of the Chalifa International Stadium in Doha
Photo: Andreas Gebert / dpa
Leading human rights organizations have issued a devastating judgment on the world football association Fifa in the debate about a compensation fund for migrant workers.
World football's governing body is "deceiving the world," according to a joint statement by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, FairSquare and Equidem.
The World Football Association is still not fulfilling its "human rights responsibility because it refuses to compensate migrant workers and their families for abuses in the preparation and implementation of the World Cup in Qatar," it said.
Since May, human rights activists have been calling for a $440 million fund to be set up for migrant workers who were exploited, injured or died preparing for the tournament.
Tirana Hassan, executive director of Human Rights Watch, called "Fifa's outrageous whitewashing" of the serious abuses suffered by migrant workers in Qatar.
It is a "global embarrassment" and a "sinister tactic" to evade the human rights responsibility for compensation: "Fifa continues to collect billions of dollars in revenue, but refuses to do the same to the families of those killed or the workers cheated of their wages only to pay one cent.« In the four-year cycle from 2018 to 2022, Fifa earned 7.5 billion US dollars (around 7.3 billion euros) - around one billion more than in connection with the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
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