1 of 4 | Amnesty said in its report Thursday that thousands of migrant workers in Qatar died suddenly and unexpectedly, despite passing medical tests. File Photo by EPA
Aug. 26 (UPI) -- Amnesty International said in a new report Thursday that seven in 10 migrant deaths that occurred in Qatar over the past decade have not sufficiently been explained, raising questions about potentially extreme working conditions in the Middle Eastern nation.
According to the 56-page report, many of the migrant workers died while working on infrastructure projects in unsafe conditions. However, Qatari officials have failed to investigate or compensate their families, it adds.
Amnesty's report highlights six deaths in particular, involving workers from Bangladesh and Nepal. It says one of the most well-documented and foreseeable risks to workers' health is exposure to extreme heat and humidity.
The organization goes on to say Qatar has consistently failed to meet human rights obligations and explain as many as 70% of the migrant worker deaths since 2010 -- which is the year Qatar was awarded the 2022 FIFA World Cup and commenced a number of infrastructure projects for the soccer event.
Many of the deaths were attributed to "natural causes" or medical issues like cardiac arrest and respiratory failure -- but experts say those classifications do not explain the cases of death, and none of them detail working conditions.
"In a well resourced health system, it should be possible to identify the exact cause of death in all but 1% of cases," the report states.
The precise number of migrant deaths in Qatar since 2010 is unknown, but Amnesty said in its report that thousands died suddenly and unexpectedly despite passing medical tests.
Amnesty concludes that, with adequate protection measures, hundreds of those migrant lives could have been saved.
"Since relatively young male workers selected for their ability to sustain physical work usually don't suffer from deadly cardiovascular disease, my conclusion as a cardiologist is that these deaths are caused by heat strokes," Dr. Dan Atar, a professor at the University of Oslo, says in the report.
"The concern is that the bodies of the workers cannot take the heat stress they are being exposed to."
Qatar introduced new heat-protection legislation in May that proposed new restrictions on summer working hours and granting workers the right to "self-pace." It also proposes a hard temperature limit for working in extreme heat.
The World Cup in Qatar begins on Nov. 21, 2022, and will run through Dec. 18. The soccer tournament is held once every four years.
