Football Fans Support Human Rights: Daily Brief

 

By Andrew Stroehlein. Contact me at DailyBriefTeam@hrw.org and Twitter @astroehlein. 

Football Fans Support Human Rights

I don’t pretend to be a big sports guy, but even I can see when football fans kick the puck into the basket for a home run.

The results of a new poll are out today, showing strong public support for the international football association FIFA to compensate World Cup workers properly, and for national associations to push them to do so.

The World Cup 2022, which begins in Qatar in November, is stained with human rights abuses. Since 2010, when FIFA awarded the tournament to Qatar despite its poor human rights record, thousands of migrant workers have lost their lives to unexplained causes or suffered injuries, and many more have been victims of wage theft by employers.

These abuses have received significant media attention around the world, and along with many partner organizations, HRW has been working on a major campaign for a worker compensation fund, saying: #PayUpFIFA.

The new YouGov poll, commissioned by Amnesty International, demonstrates that football fans are very aware of the issues and concerned about them.

Surveying more than 17,000 people in 15 countries, it showed that 73% of adults support FIFA compensating migrant workers who suffered in the preparation of the tournament. This rises to 84% among actual fans – those who said they were likely to watch at least one World Cup match. Only 10% opposed the idea.

67% of adults polled think their national football associations should publicly speak out on human rights issues related to the tournament, including the compensation of migrant workers.

Football fans care about human rights. They want a clean game.

FIFA should listen to the fans.

 

What a Bank Robbery Says about Lebanon

A dramatic video spread on social media yesterday showing a woman and several activists from a depositors’ group holding up a bank in Beirut, apparently at gunpoint.

What drove the woman, and others before her and immediately after her in Lebanon, to take such drastic actions in the first place?

The short answer is Lebanon’s financial and economic crisis, raging since 2019.

The World Bank has described it as a “deliberate depression,” caused by Lebanese leaders’ mismanagement and lack of effective policy actions. With triple-digit inflation and food prices climbing even faster, the UN has estimated that more than 80 percent of the country’s residents do not have access to basic rights, including health, education, and an adequate standard of living.

People don’t have money to live. The national currency lost 90 percent of its value, and banks impose arbitrary restrictions on cash withdrawals.

Like most people in Lebanon, the woman in yesterday’s viral video, Sali Hafiz, had been unable to access her savings in the usual ways. Walking out with US$13,000, she said she’d used a toy gun in the heist and was taking her money to pay for her sister’s cancer treatment.

“I have nothing more to lose,” Hafiz told the media. “I got to the end of the road.”

How many others in Lebanon are also at the end of the road?

 

Good News Comes Too Late for Many Afghans

The US and several international partners are creating a foundation to start spending the US$3.5 billion in funds that the Biden Administration had seized from Afghanistan’s central bank after the Taliban took power last year.

The new institution will be able to use the money to help address the country’s dire economic and humanitarian crisis, while also keeping the Taliban’s hands off it.

Good news, right?

Well, sure, but let me explain how “good news” often works in this field…

For a full year, HRW and many other leading rights groups and aid organizations have been pressing for the US and the international community to take this step “urgently.” In the meantime, while Washington dithered, millions went hungry in Afghanistan, and an untold number died of malnutrition and starvation.

So, yes, the new foundation is good news for those who managed to survive the last twelve months. But for the others?

Those of a more philosophical mindset will maybe talk about glasses half-full and half-empty. But when it’s empty plates at mealtimes and clinics empty of medicines, those philosophical clichés can be thrown out the half-opened window.

 

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Take Note

(curated today by Alice Autin)

• European court condemns France over ISIS families repatriation refusals (Le Monde, French) 
• Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed on a cease-fire to end two days of heavy fighting (AP) 
• Australia government uses taxpayer funds on junta-linked companies in Myanmar (ABC) 
• Three political prisoners died in custody in Egypt within two days (Middle East Eye) 
• Ten killed in twin air strikes on Ethiopia's Tigray (France 24) 
• More fires in the Brazilian Amazon in the first week of September than in all September 2021 (HRW) 
• NGOs ask prosecutors, UN to investigate France’s involvement in Egyptian airstrikes on civilians (The Guardian) 
• Egyptian government hides behind the UN ahead of COP27 (HRW) 
• Living without rights should not be normalized in El Salvador (Tamara Taraciuk, El faro) 

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Discussion: US Failing on Child Rights

In the Daily Brief on September 13, I highlighted how the United States is failing on children’s rights, as detailed in HRW’s new interactive scorecard, a state-by-state guide.

Yesterday, experts from HRW and around the US discussed the issue in a Twitter Space.

Listen here!

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Name That Podcast!

In Friday’s edition of this newsletter, I asked you for help in naming our new podcast.

Hosted by my colleague, Birgit Schwarz, the as-yet-unnamed podcast will be a deep dive into a different human rights issue every week. The show will be global in outlook and human in approach, with a focus on the voices of activists from around the world.

On Monday, I shared some of the names that came in, but we’ve had more since. These include: Voicing Human Rights; Speaking of Human Rights; Rise of the Rights; Let's Name It!; and Call me by your right!

Please keep the ideas coming: email me or contact me on Twitter with your suggestions.

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Your Top Human Rights Quotes?

Some folks have sent theirs in already, but what is your favorite human-rights-related quote of all time?

It could be from an activist or from a lawyer or from an artist… But it should be inspiring.

Let me know! Email me or contact me on Twitter with your favorites.

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Quote of the Day: France

“France should take this judgment as a wakeup call and promptly repatriate all French children and their mothers still detained in the region, as well as other French nationals held there.”

Bénédicte Jeannerod, HRW’s France director on yesterday’s decision by the European Court of Human Rights that France has violated its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights by refusing to repatriate five French women and children arbitrarily detained for more than three years as ISIS suspects and family members in northeast Syria.

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