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Episode details

World Service,22 Nov 2022,48 mins

We need to talk about Qatar

Sportsworld

Available for over a year

As the World Cup kicks off Delyth Lloyd is joined by the BBC’s Sports News Correspondent Alex Capstick to examine a range of issues that have overshadowed Qatar 2022, starting with the initial awarding of the tournament, which the former Fifa President Sepp Blatter has since told the BBC was a “mistake”. Yasmine Ahmed from Human Rights Watch joins us to talk about the conditions for migrant workers in the country and says while they have improved, more must be done to compensate workers, and the families of those that have been injured or died in the country. Dr Nasser Mohamed, a gay Qatari now living in the USA, opens up about his experience growing up as a gay man in Qatar, and explained what he hopes to achieve by founding the “Proud Maroons”, a LGBTQI+ fans group for the country’s national team. We also examine the claims around the environmental impact of the tournament, which Fifa insists will be the first carbon-neutral World Cup, and hear from leading environmentalists who’ve told the BBC that claim is "dangerous and misleading". And we assess what impact hosting the tournament has had on the country, and what legacy Qatar’s Supreme Committee and Fifa hope it will leave behind.

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