Armour: With no improvements for workers, FIFA must pull World Cup from Qatar

Enough is enough.

For five years, Qatar has ignored the polite requests from FIFA and its sponsors to clean up its abysmal record on human rights, particularly those applying to migrant workers. Even the embarrassment of public scoldings couldn’t produce meaningful change.

If Qatar has shown this little enthusiasm for reform now, in the years when FIFA still has the 2022 World Cup as a bargaining chip, what makes anyone think the emirate will do so when it no longer has to fear losing soccer’s biggest prize? Because, news flash, it won’t.

Which leaves FIFA with only one choice. On Wednesday, the fifth anniversary of awarding Qatar the 2022 World Cup, world soccer’s governing body must take it back.

No more timetables. No more promises.

And no more inhumane treatment of the workers building the stadiums that were to be the crown jewels for Qatar’s coronation as a player in international sports.

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Qatari leaders will surely howl, claiming that the Middle East is just as worthy of hosting the World Cup as other, more established countries. That it’s unfair to expect every country to share Western political mores. On those points, they’re right.

But this isn’t Advanced Civics the Qataris have repeatedly failed. It’s basic human decency.

Women are seen as second-class citizens in Qatar — if they’re seen at all. It’s no better for gays and lesbians, with homosexual activity still illegal. As for migrant workers, the kafala sponsorship system is just a fancy term for slavery.

Workers are at the mercy of their employers, unable to switch jobs or even leave the country without their permission. Some even hold their workers’ passports to prevent them from leaving. Unions can’t offer protection because they don’t exist in Qatar.

The government has prosecuted some businesses for poor health and safety standards, according to Amnesty International. But there are still reports of poor conditions, and Qatar has pushed off its promise to expand its inspection force until the end of 2016.

It also has yet to open an independent investigation into the deaths of migrant workers, which one trade union once estimated could number as high as 4,000 before the World Cup.

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Of the nine fundamental labor rights identified as lacking in a May report by Amnesty International, the group said in an update Monday that Qatar has made "little to no progress" on seven of them. The only area in which Qatar came close to getting a passing grade was for timely payment of wages.

Imagine that. Workers actually being paid on time for the work they do rather than not seeing the money until months later, if at all.

Before their families back home get all crazy and start buying things like food and clothes, however, they might want to make sure the money actually makes it to the bank. Though the law requiring employers to pay workers via direct deposit was passed in February, it only took effect in November.

"Qatar’s persistent labor reform delays are a recipe for human rights disaster," Mustafa Qadri, a Gulf Migrant Rights researcher at Amnesty International, said in a statement.

"The reforms proposed by the government fail to tackle the central issues that leave so many workers at the mercy of employers," Qadri added, "yet even these changes have been delayed."

Which brings us back to FIFA.

Now, greed and corruption are two of FIFA’s favorite pastimes. Longtime president Sepp Blatter and his heir apparent, Michel Platini, are both banned as the result of their involvement in a Swiss criminal investigation. No fewer than a dozen other members of FIFA’s executive committee have stepped aside or been ousted or suspended because of corruption allegations — and that’s just in the last five years.

FIFA’s credibility is shot, and almost no one thinks it would even recognize what the right thing is, let alone actually do it.

By stripping Qatar of the World Cup, FIFA can show it’s sincere about its own reform attempts. That it is no longer interested in profiting from ill-gotten gains, be they in the form of bribes or physical and psychological brutality.

Qatar had its chances — five years' worth of them — to do right. Now it's FIFA's turn.

Follow columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.