Qatar asks for time to implement labor reforms

Qatari sports executives, in a bid to refute calls for depriving Qatar of its 2022 World Cup hosting rights, have asked their human rights and trade union critics, as well as world football body FIFA, to give them more time to address criticism of the Gulf state's kafala or sponsorship system that puts employees at the mercy of their employers.

The plea for time reflects the fact that Qatar is caught in a Catch-22, with its critics pushing for a vote to withdraw its hosting rights during FIFA's Congress this spring in Zurich and domestic resistance from a citizenry that fears that change will open the flood gates to a Qatari loss of their culture and society because they account for only 12 percent of the population.

Under fire almost from the day in late 2010 on which it won its bid to host the World Cup for the legal and physical working and housing conditions of migrant laborers, who account for a majority of the Gulf state's population, Qatar has promised to introduce legal reforms. Two major Qatari institutions, the 2022 Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy and the Qatar Foundation, have adopted standards for contractors that have largely been welcomed by critics.

A Qatari failure to enshrine those standards in national legislation, its implementation so far of only minor changes like obliging to employers to pay wages and salaries by bank transfer, and its mere incremental increase of labor inspectors tasked with enforcing existing rules and regulations, has undermined the credibility Qatar established by engaging with its critics. Qatar's engagement constituted a sharp break with past practice and contrasts starkly with most other Gulf states, who bar entry to human rights and trade union activists and incarcerate their...