At the beginning of 2021, the British daily The Guardian published a detailed investigation revealing that at least 6,500 immigrant workers in Qatar had died there between 2011 and 2020. Since then, this figure of “6,500 dead” has become central in the criticism of the organization of the 2022 World Cup, and many are those who cite it, thinking that it corresponds to the number of workers who died on the sites of the stadiums of the competition, or more broadly on the sites of the World Cup. This is however not quite the case.
How was this estimate of 6,500 dead calculated?
- A census of dead immigrants in Qatar
The investigation of Guardian, published in February 2021, focuses on non-Qatari residents who died in the country between 2011 and the end of 2020. Based on death records produced by the embassies or government departments of five countries with many nationals in Qatar (India, Bangladesh, Nepal , Sri Lanka, Pakistan), the London newspaper counted over this ten-year period 6,751 confirmed deaths of workers, specifying in passing that this number could be clearly underestimated, since it does not include nationals of other many countries (Philippines, Kenya, etc.) in Qatar. The deaths of the last months of 2020 and 2021 are also not included in the data collected by the Guardian.
Among the causes of these deaths, one predominates: “natural death”, which represents 70% of the causes cited for Indian, Nepalese or Bangladeshi workers, a share which reaches 80% for Indians. This is partly because no autopsy or medical examination is performed to determine the real cause of death.
This publication of Guardian follows on from a first survey by the same daily on Qatar’s preparation for the World Cup, published in 2013describing situations of “forced labor, a form of modern slavery”, leading to several dozen deaths over the summer. It documents the daily life of Nepalese workers on the construction sites of Lusail – a new Qatari city built north of Doha, intended to house the largest of the seven stadiums built – whose papers were confiscated, who did not receive their wages, and who were housed in unsanitary conditions. The same year, The world also denounced the working conditions of immigrants in Qatar.
- The limits of embassy registers
This figure obviously has its limits. The registers of foreign embassies consulted by the Guardian almost never specify the age of the deceased, nor the place of their death, nor the sector in which they worked. Which makes Max Tuñon, the director of the Qatari branch of the International Labor Organization (ILO), say that some of these deaths may not be construction workers but office workers or inactive people. .
Unsurprisingly, Qatar strongly contests these figures, and affirms that only 37 deaths would have occurred among the workers present on the construction sites of the stadiums: three are attributed to work and 34 would have other causes (among which ten concern men aged 20 to 40 years old).
- Deaths on stadium construction sites, but not only
In its communication, the Qatari government generally only includes the renovation or construction sites of the eight stadiums of the competition, which represent only 2% of the workers employed in construction in Qatar.
But plenty of accommodation and public transport (like the Doha metro) probably wouldn’t have been built if Qatar hadn’t hosted the World Cup, which is due to host 1.2 million people in the country of 330. 000 Qatari citizens.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) believe that the spectacular construction boom in the country for more than ten years is largely attributable to FIFA’s decision. Especially since “Qatar’s infrastructure program schedule is fully aligned with the World Cup delivery date”notes Tim Noonan, campaign director of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), interviewed by the BBC in 2015.
The figure of 6,500 dead is not taken up by the main NGOs which follow closely the situation of migrant workers in Qatar and in the Gulf States, and which evoke rather “several thousand dead” of immigrant workers, an order of magnitude that they consider consistent with their observations in the field and the research they have been conducting for more than ten years in the emirate. The ITUC had estimated in 2013 that 4,000 workers died by the start of the World Cup at the end of 2022.
Can we draw up a precise toll of the dead workers?
- Official fragmentary statistics
The Qatari government broadcasts every year official statistics on the subject. Even if we do not know their reliability or completeness, they can give some clues.
According to this data, 12,412 immigrant men died between 2011 and 2020, almost half of whom (5,935) were between the ages of 20 and 50, which is relatively young. The Qataris explained to the Guardian that the death toll was proportional to the size of the immigrant population, undisclosed by authorities but estimated at 2.5 million in 2020, for about 330,000 Qataris. An argument taken over by the Indian authoritieswho estimate that the mortality is that expected of such a large population.
This is not entirely correct, because these young men are selected after a complete medical examination, as Tim Noonan pointed out in 2015. “Qatar requires them to have a medical examination to detect previous medical problems, so it’s like comparing apples and pears”he argued.
- Foreign dead are young
The overrepresentation of these ” youth “ adults is particularly clear in the data on deaths by age group: in 2020, 25% of immigrant men who died in the country were between 20 and 40 years old, while this same age group represents 10% of deaths recorded among Qatari men. The gap is even greater in 2012, when 20-40 year olds accounted for almost 40% of dead immigrants, compared to 12% for Qataris.
The same trend is observed among 40-60 year olds: their share varies between 20% and 26% among Qatari deaths, while it represents between 35% and 42% of immigrants’ deaths.
The same observations can be made when we report the demographic weight of each age group in the respective populations of Qatari and immigrant men. Among men of Qatari nationality, the vast majority of deaths occur among those over 55, even though they represent a minority in the – rather young – population of the country. The demography of immigrant men is different, but so is their mortality: the majority of the dead are under 55 (around 60%), and one in five immigrant dead is between 35 and 44 years old.
Extreme heat fatal to workers
These many deaths are largely due to exposure to the dust and extreme heat of the Gulf climate for most of the year, which makes working outdoors very difficult and hazardous to health.
- Wet-bulb globe temperatures
Temperatures can frequently exceed 40°C in summer and remain above 30°C for at least six months of the year. To protect construction workers, Qatar has banned outdoor work from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. This measure, which is in fact only applied too little, is also very largely insufficient to prevent damage to the health of workers, as shown by an analysis published by the Guardian in October 2019.
The British daily has calculated the so-called “wet bulb globe” (or WBGT) temperatures, an index that measures the combined effects of heat, solar radiation and air humidity on the human body. . If it exceeds 28°C, it is considered dangerous. In Qatar, this value is frequently exceeded, especially in August when it reaches 28-30 almost all day. From mid-June, the temperatures are so high that it becomes dangerous to work outside for more than fifteen minutes per hour for most of the day. However, countless workers have testified to working days of at least ten hours, sometimes twelve, in defiance of safety rules, imposing extreme thermal stress on the organisms.
- Temperatures, cardiac arrests and kidney problems
In a study published in July 2019 in the journal Cardiologyan international team of researchers noted a “strong correlation” between temperatures and cardiovascular events recorded among Nepalese immigrant workers in Qatar. “The pronounced mortality from cardiovascular events during hot seasons is most likely due to intense heat stress”conclude the researchers, who estimate that around 35% of fatal cardiac arrests could have been avoided by better protecting workers against heat. “Young men have a very low incidence of cardiac arrest”explained to Guardian Dr. Dan Atar, professor of cardiology at Oslo University Hospital and co-author of the study. Especially since “these workers are recruited in their countries partly for their good health (…)and yet hundreds of them die every year in Qatar”.
Immigrant workers exposed to this heat would also develop serious chronic kidney damage (called CKDnt) which disproportionately affects men occupying handling positions in the construction industry. In a short publication from March 2020, a team of Nepalese researchers noted these systematic attacks on a cohort of 44 Nepalese workers followed for six months in 2019, three quarters of whom came from the Gulf countries (and a quarter from Malaysia). While the medical causes of these kidney diseases are still undetermined, excessive working hours and lack of access to necessary medical care seem to have played a decisive role.