On this week, four years from now, the first World Cup match will be held in December. For the first time in history, the world's largest football event will be held in the Middle East, the Independent reported.

The 2022 World Cup has already become the most controversial sporting event since the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Nazi Germany, where Qatar won the right to host the tournament after competing with England, the United States, Australia, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, South Korea and Japan.

The newspaper pointed out that Qatar is accused of bribing FIFA officials to get votes after the disclosure of suspicious payments worth millions of dollars and accusations of running a smear campaign to discredit the competition. 

Qatar has spotted an opportunity here to address criticism and redraw its image. The state introduced new labour laws with an impressive pledge to dismantle the controversial Kafala system that enables the abuse of workers. The proposals were hailed in some quarters as a major breakthrough for workers’ rights, but have been questioned by others including Amnesty International.

Gulf researcher Nicholas McGeehan is concerned Qatar will be slow to fully implement these plans. “Has anything materially changed? No,” he tells The Independent. “How many are dying? They don’t release the numbers, so we don't know. How are they dying? They don't carry out autopsies, so we don't know. Fundamentally, the question is ‘can a worker change jobs?’ The answer is still no.”

Genuine reform of worker rights is the one thing the Qatari regime fears most: it would disrupt an economy built on the labour-intensive oil and construction industries, and it would shift power away from the royal family towards its vast migrant worker population. It is a country segregated along lines of race and worker status, and the state would prefer to keep it that way.