Compensation for migrant workers who built the Qatar World Cup remains largely unpaid by FIFA, which has given no money directly to any harmed worker, while Qatar’s state-run Workers’ Support and Insurance Fund has disbursed roughly $630 million since 2019 through a mechanism that advocacy groups and the workers themselves say falls short of what is owed. Several legal and political fronts are still pressing for remedy, including a federal trafficking lawsuit in Colorado, an Amnesty International campaign for a $440 million fund, and FIFA’s own commissioned report that concluded the governing body contributed to severe human rights harms.
What Workers Are Owed
Qatar spent an estimated $220 billion preparing for the 2022 tournament, drawing hundreds of thousands of workers from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Human rights organizations documented wage theft running into months of unpaid salaries, illegal recruitment fees that left workers deeply indebted before they ever started work, passport confiscation, dangerous conditions in extreme heat, and cramped housing.
Deaths became the defining issue. The Guardian calculated that more than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka died in Qatar between 2010 and 2020. Roughly 69% of deaths among Indian, Nepali, and Bangladeshi workers were classified as “natural” and attributed to acute heart or respiratory failure — labels epidemiologists and advocacy groups have challenged as potentially masking heat-related or work-related causes. FIFA and the tournament’s organizing committee maintained that only three deaths were officially work-related on stadium construction sites, with 37 additional fatalities classified non-work-related. Hassan al-Thawadi, secretary general of Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, acknowledged in a late-2022 television interview that “between 400 and 500” migrant worker deaths were related to World Cup infrastructure, far higher than previously admitted.
The harms a compensation program would need to address are therefore layered: unpaid wages, recruitment-fee debt, injuries, families of the deceased, and unexplained deaths where causation itself is contested.
Qatar’s Workers’ Support and Insurance Fund
The only mechanism that has actually paid workers at scale is Qatar’s Workers’ Support and Insurance Fund, established by law in 2018. According to the International Labour Organization, the fund has disbursed roughly $630 million since 2019, and Qatar’s government says over 130,000 workers have benefited. Qatar’s labor minister has stated that any worker entitled to compensation who has not received it should come forward.
Human Rights Watch has reported a different reality on the ground. Workers who came forward with evidence of wage theft were often not compensated, and even where labor courts ruled in workers’ favor, companies failed to obey the orders and the government did not intervene. Questions also persist about whether the fund’s payments represent full settlements or only partial amounts, and whether its maximum payout limits leave workers short — particularly those owed years of end-of-service benefits.
The $440 Million Demand and FIFA’s Refusal
Amnesty International led the most prominent campaign for financial remedy from FIFA itself, calling for a compensation fund of at least $440 million. The figure was pegged symbolically to a fraction of FIFA’s $7.5 billion in tournament revenue. The campaign argued that workers and the families of those who died deserved direct payments covering wage theft, recruitment-fee debt, injuries, and unexplained deaths.
FIFA has not paid. As of late 2024, no money had gone from FIFA directly to any worker harmed in connection with the tournament. FIFA and Qatari officials pointed to the Workers’ Support and Insurance Fund as the existing mechanism, which effectively shifted responsibility for remedy onto Qatar’s own system — the same system Human Rights Watch and others have documented as failing to deliver on labor court rulings.
FIFA’s Own Report and the Legacy Fund Decision
In March 2023, FIFA’s subcommittee on human rights and social responsibility commissioned an independent study from the consultancy Human Level. Completed in late 2023 and published in November 2024, the study concluded that “a number of severe human rights impacts did ultimately occur in Qatar from 2010 through 2022,” including deaths, injuries, illness, months of unpaid wages, and crushing recruitment-fee debt. It found that “a credible argument can be made that FIFA contributed to some of the impacts.”
The subcommittee recommended that FIFA use its $50 million World Cup 2022 Legacy Fund to provide financial remedy to affected workers. Two days before the report was published, FIFA announced the fund would instead support international development projects in partnership with the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, and UNHCR, covering refugee services, occupational health, women’s economic empowerment, and football talent development. None of the fund’s four pillars is dedicated to direct worker compensation.
FIFA stated the Human Level study “did not specifically constitute a legal assessment of the obligation to remedy.” A spokesperson said that “while all recommendations could not be met, practical and impactful elements were retained.” Lise Klaveness, president of the Norwegian Football Federation, argued that the development fund “is in no way a substitute” for the worker remediation FIFA’s own advisers had called for.
Lawsuits Still Seeking Remedy
Filipino Workers’ Trafficking Case in Colorado
The most active legal effort to recover compensation on behalf of workers is a case in U.S. federal court in Colorado. Dozens of Filipino workers sued Jacobs Solutions Inc. and related entities under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, alleging the defendants knowingly benefited from a venture involving forced labor, passport confiscation, and inhumane conditions during World Cup stadium construction.
In a June 2025 ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Cyrus Y. Chung largely permitted the trafficking claims to proceed, finding that the plaintiffs plausibly alleged the defendants had knowledge of or recklessly disregarded the forced labor. Some defendants and some plaintiffs’ claims were dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, but the core case against Jacobs Engineering Group and certain CH2M Hill entities continues.
Earlier Suit Against FIFA in Zurich
An earlier attempt to hold FIFA directly accountable in court failed. In 2017, the Bangladesh Free Trade Union Congress, supported by the Dutch union FNV, sued FIFA in Switzerland on behalf of a Bangladeshi worker. The Commercial Court of the Canton of Zurich dismissed the case on January 3, 2017, ruling that it did not constitute a commercial dispute within the court’s jurisdiction and that the claims were not “sufficiently specific and enforceable.”
The OECD Track
A parallel route produced commitments rather than cash. Building and Wood Workers’ International filed an OECD complaint against FIFA in May 2015, alleging a failure to conduct human rights due diligence. The Swiss National Contact Point accepted the complaint and facilitated mediation, which concluded on May 2, 2017, with FIFA agreeing to exercise its leverage on working conditions, integrate human rights into due diligence, include a BWI representative on its Human Rights Advisory Board, and review worker grievance mechanisms. A 2018 follow-up confirmed substantial progress on implementation. No worker compensation flowed from the agreement.
Labor Reforms Are Not Back Pay
Qatar did enact labor reforms under international pressure, including the formal reform of the kafala sponsorship system, abolition of exit permits for most workers in 2018, a 2020 law allowing job changes without the current sponsor’s permission, a non-discriminatory minimum wage of QAR 1,000 per month introduced in March 2021, and heat-stress rules restricting outdoor work in summer months. Between September 2020 and October 2023, over 669,000 job-change applications were approved, and the ILO reported a 77% drop in heat-related disorders.
These reforms address future working conditions, not compensation for past harms. Their durability is also uncertain. A June 2024 decision by Qatar’s Shura Council effectively reintroduced exit permits by requiring employer approval through a government app before a worker can leave the country. Employers have found workarounds to the kafala abolition by demanding end-of-employment letters that function as the old No-Objection Certificates. The ILO has called the minimum wage “too low” and warned that progress may “slow significantly or even reverse” as international pressure wanes. For a worker still owed wages from 2019, none of this reaches the money.
What the 2034 Decision Means for Qatar Workers
FIFA confirmed Saudi Arabia as the host of the 2034 World Cup in December 2024, and the compensation debate has largely shifted toward preventing a repeat rather than resolving the Qatar record. FIFA’s bid evaluation rated Saudi Arabia as “medium risk” on human rights but did not consult migrant workers or civil society. BWI filed a forced labor complaint against the Saudi government with the ILO in June 2024. Amnesty International labeled FIFA’s evaluation of the Saudi bid “an astonishing whitewash.” The practical point for Qatar workers is that the 2034 process has not opened any new channel for them to recover what they are owed; the question of back pay, death benefits, and recruitment-fee reimbursement from the 2022 tournament remains where it was, with Qatar’s fund paying some workers partially, FIFA paying none, and a single federal lawsuit in Colorado as the most concrete legal path still moving forward.