
The Devastating Truth About Qatar's World Cup Bid
Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup, and this investigation follows the human cost behind the stadiums going up in Doha. Reporters and labor rights advocates lay out the kafala sponsorship system that ties migrant workers, many from Nepal and India, to a single employer who holds their passport and controls whether they can leave the country. The film cites an estimate that thousands of workers could die building the infrastructure for the tournament, and it backs that claim with testimony from laborers describing unpaid wages, confiscated documents, and dormitory conditions in the desert heat. Construction sites, work camps, and interviews with officials and NGO representatives fill out the picture of a bid built on cheap, controlled labor. As the first part of a series, it sets up the central question the tournament's organizers would keep facing for years afterward: whether a global sporting event can be separated from how it gets built.