What you should know about Qatar, the World Cup organiser

Where is Qatar, and what does it look like?

Qatar is a small monarch of 2.7 million people, of whom 300 thousand are autochthons, and the rest are aliens. Qatar is in the Persian Gulf and has land boundaries with only Saudi Arabia. The whole place is about 10 times the size of New York and all meetings will be played in eight stadiums in a narrow space around the capital of Doha.

Who heads Qatar and how does he earn his income?

The educated sheik in Great Britain, Tamim bin-Hamad al-Thani inherited power from his father about a decade ago and he controls almost all spheres of government. Once one of the poorest Gulf states, Qatar has now returned to be one of the richest countries in the world per capita thanks to oil and gas.

What is his role in geopolics?

Qatar has “opened” in its foreign policy in which all political groups are spoken, which shows why this country has had a mediating role, for example, between the Taliban and the United States. But Qatar's support for Islamic groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in Gaza, has sparked serious divisions with its neighbours.

In June 2017, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain had severed diplomatic relations with Qatar. The role of Saudi Arabia, in particular, meant that Qatar had effectively been removed from the rest of the world. Blockada left last year.

What's Qatar famous for?

The small state has an external influence across the region and in the global sphere due to the launching of pan-Arab influence in 2006 and international broadcaster Al Jazeera.

While he is half-owned to the state- and avoiding criticism of Qatar's monarchy- Al Jazeera has maintained a level of independence in her reporting, becoming a key source of recent news throughout the Middle East, especially during the riots in the Arab Spring that erupted in 2011.

Dictators in the vicinity of the region despise Al Jazeera, who has reported closely on pro-democracy movements and Islamist riots. They accuse Qatar of using the channel for inciting unrest.

Why is this race so controversial?

Unfortunately, although not exclusively, the main arguments made against the organisation of the race in Qatar are due:

Workers ' Rights

The role of Qatar's large number of labour migrants -- often from southern and eastern Asia -- in the local construction industry has dominated discussions. An investigation by The Guardian in 2019 found that hundreds of workers had worked to the death at burning temperatures of up to 45 degrees Celsius to 10 hours during the shift, six days a week. Many workers lived in crowded dormitories and in heavy condition, and some of them interviewed said they paid approximately 1 euros per hour.

Responding to criticism, Qatar declared the minimum wage and abolished the abusive system KafalaThe system under which workers were not allowed to change their jobs and who were effectively controlled by their employer. However, Amnesty International said that human rights abuses “are of a large scale”.

LGBTQ+ Community Rights

Qatar condemns activities between the same genders with imprisonment, and the country ranks very weak in assessments of LGBTQ+ rights, even according to regional standards.

In the past month, Human Rights Watch published a report, documenting what it claimed was a political action “armir” against residents LGBTQ+ in Qatar. An official said that claims “contained information that is Categorically and completely false”, without more accurate.

Climate crisis

At first Qatar proposy to organize the race during the summer, when the average temperature rose to 36 degrees and sometimes up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit [50 ° C], although FIFA had confirmed that such a contest would be held during the winter.

The country has promised its first carbon-neutral lab “, meaning less carbon-neutral output. But concerns have been expressed about the use of air conditioners at the stadium and the hundreds of thousands of gallons of detilized water needed to maintain fresh and green fields.

Corruption

There is no evidence to connect Qatar itself to any form of corruption in terms of successfully accepting their offer for the World Cup, but it has now been 12 years since being declared a welcoming country and suspicions are still circulated as a country that has never qualified for the race to gain the right to organise it. Instead, attention is directed towards 22 members of FIFA's executive committee during that time, 16 of whom have been involved or investigated on some form of alleged corruption or bad practice.

Earlier this month the former president F IFA, Sepp Blutter, claimed that the race was granted state of the Gulf due to the actions of former U president EFA, Michel Platini, under pressure from then France President Nicolas Sarcozy. Platini, a former France player, acknowledged that a meeting with Sarcozy had taken place, but denies his votes were affected. Sarcozy had earlier chosen not to comment on these claims. /Periscopi/