Worker Safety In Qatar Is Poor

Basic Facts About Qatar

Qatar is shown in green. 

As the Huffington Post which is my source for the map and pronunciation of the country's name explains:

Qatar is a small Middle Eastern peninsula in the Persian Gulf bordered by Saudi Arabia. It has been ruled by the Al-Thani family since the mid-1800s, according to the CIA World Factbook, and has a population of about 840,000 people. It is slightly smaller than Connecticut. This tiny nation holds the world's third largest oil reserves, and oil and natural gas account for over 50 percent of the GDP.

Qatar is pronounced so that it sounds roughly like "cutter" and is one of the only words in which the letter Q appears without being followed by the letter "u" in its English spelling.

According to Wikipedia:

Qatar has been ruled as a hereditary monarchy by the House of Thani since Mohammed bin Thani signed a treaty with the British in 1868 that recognised its separate status. Following Ottoman rule, Qatar became a British protectorate in the early 20th century until gaining independence in 1971. The current emir is Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who holds nearly all executive and legislative authority under the Constitution of Qatar, as well as controlling the judiciary. He appoints the prime minister and cabinet. The partially-elected Consultative Assembly can block legislation and has a limited ability to dismiss ministers.

In early 2017, Qatar's total population was 2.6 million, with 313,000 of them Qatari citizens and 2.3 million expatriates. Its official religion is Islam. In terms of income, the country has the fourth-highest GDP (PPP) per capita in the world, and the eleventh-highest GNI per capita (Atlas method). Qatar ranks 42nd in the Human Development Index, the third-highest HDI in the Arab world. It is a high-income economy, backed by the world's third-largest natural gas reserves and oil reserves. Qatar is one of the world's largest exporters of liquefied natural gas, and the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide per capita.

Qatar In The Spotlight

Qatar is currently hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup (the global championship for professional soccer, the world's leading sport) which has turned the spotlight on the country, not necessarily in a positive way. 

Qatar has received attention for its restrictions on beer consumption in a country where alcohol consumption is mostly banned due to Islamic prohibitions on consuming it, the hostility of the venue to LGBT associated symbols since hostility towards gays attributed to Islam is the norm there, its treatment of women justified by Islam, and its weak protections for human rights (particularly for migrant workers who make up 90% of the workforce) and its lack of democracy. 

I say "attributed to" and "justified by" because many of the "Islamic practices" of countries like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia are not universal in predominantly Islamic countries and are justified with Islamic religious authorities in ways that do not compel the conclusions that these communities reach about what Islamic law requires according to many Muslims and Muslim religious scholars. 

Worker Safety In Qatar 

The issue addressed in this post, however, worker safety, is an issue with regard to which Islamic and Western norms, secular and religious alike, are not meaningfully in disagreement. The Qataris, like almost everyone else in the world, would prefer that there are no workplace fatalities.

World Cup chief Hassan Al-Thawadi said that between 400 and 500 migrant workers have died as a result of work done on projects connected to the tournament [since Qatar was selected to host this year's World Cup in 2010].

In an interview with Piers Morgan which aired on TalkTV on Monday, Al-Thawadi was asked about the number of fatalities to migrant workers as a result of the work done in the tournament and said: “The estimate is around 400, between 400 and 500.

“I don’t have the exact number, that’s something that’s been discussed. One death is too many, it’s as simple as that.”

From CNN.

* Fatal Occupational Injuries in U.S. in 2019: 5,333

World Almanac 2022 citing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

* U.S. Population in 2019: 328.3 million

Google

* Fatal Occupational Injuries per year in U.S. per million people: 16.2

* Per Capita GDP in U.S.: $63,554

World Almanac 2022

* Average Annual Migrant Worker Fatal Deaths in Qatar: 650

2010-2019 for South Asian migrant workers only per CNN citing the Guardian

* Percentage of workforce made up of migrant workers in Qatar: 90%

CNN citing Amnesty International

* Qatar Population in 2019: 2.832 million

Google

* Fatal Migrant Worker deaths per year in Qatar per million people: 229.5

* Adjusted Qatar rate since migrant workers are 90% of the workforce: 255

* Per capita GDP in Qatar: $89,949

World Almanac 2022

Migrant workers in Qatar, who make up 90% of the workforce there, are about 15 times as likely as U.S. workers to die on the job in any given year.

The workplace death rate in Qatar is roughly what it was in the United States in 1913, before there was any significant governmental regulation of workplace safety in the United States.

In 1913, the Bureau of Labor Statistics documented approximately 23,000 industrial deaths among a workforce of 38 million, equivalent to a rate of 61 deaths per 100,000 workers. Under a different reporting system, data from the National Safety Council from 1933 through 1997 indicate that deaths from unintentional work-related injuries declined 90%, from 37 per 100,000 workers to 4 per 100,000. The corresponding annual number of deaths decreased from 14,500 to 5100; during this same period, the workforce more than tripled, from 39 million to approximately 130 million.

From the U.S. Center For Disease Control citing National Safety Council. Accident facts, 1998 edition. Itasca, Illinois: National Safety Council, 1998 and Corn JK. Response to occupational health hazards: a historical perspective. New York, New York: Nostrand Reinhold, 1992.