newspaper reportedGuardianThe British testimonies of foreign workers spoke of being harassed during their work in Qatar hotels that host the World Cup matches.
The newspaper said that it and The Fuller Project, which is concerned with publishing stories regarding women, interviewed five women who worked in different hotels in Qatar between 2017 and 2022. They talked regarding their experiences and explained in detail how they were subjected to sexual harassment and physical and verbal abuse.
Most of the hotels where the women victims worked were among some 100 now approved by FIFA to host fans and players participating in the World Cup, the paper shows.
Among the women, one named Hope, speaking on the phone from her home in Kenya, said her supervisor at work made a sexual request to her over a period of 18 months from mid-2020.
She added that when she refused his efforts, he assigned her additional cleaning work without giving her additional pay.
Another worker, Sally, also from Kenya, said that one day she was trying to finish a cleaning shift at the hotel when a guest approached her and asked for a kiss.
Sally refused the request and went to complain to her supervisor, but he told her, “You are a woman and you know how to deal with your problems.”
What she experienced at the luxury hotel still affects her, Sally says. “I never want to go back.”
Over the past months, the violations suffered by tens of thousands of migrant workers who traveled thousands of miles to help build Qatar’s dream of hosting the World Cup were documented.
However, rights groups say the problems facing migrant women have not been highlighted or investigated in the same way, and their voices have been largely absent from the debate regarding migrant workers’ rights in the run-up to the tournament.
Although the country’s expatriate workforce is dominated by men, government data shows that nearly 300,000 migrant women worked in Qatar as of June this year.
The newspaper shows that the testimonies of the women interviewed, as well as the testimonies of experts who have worked extensively with female hospitality workers in Qatar, indicate that few of them feel empowered to report sexual harassment if it occurs.
Qatari spokesmen told the newspaper that the stories of the five women were individual cases and might not be generalized to all workers.
The newspaper indicated that FIFA confirmed that it takes any allegations of misconduct seriously and has clear procedures in place for anyone who wants to report such incidents.
