These Fake World Cup Sponsor Logos Highlight Human Rights Abuses In Qatar

    Over 1,000 people may have lost their lives working in the Gulf state as it prepares to host the 2022 World Cup.

    Designs like this have been appearing on the Sports sub-Reddit for a few days now.

    FIFA's decision to award Qatar the 2022 World Cup was hugely controversial from the moment it was announced.

    There were fears about human rights abuses and the treatment of migrant workers. A Guardian investigation suggested they were well-founded.

    The paper found that 964 workers from Nepal, India and Bangladesh had died in 2012 and 2013, though it could not say how many of those were specifically due to the World Cup.

    In 2013 the International Trade Union Confederation claimed that 4,000 lives could be lost in the process of getting Qatar ready for the World Cup.

    It said that Qatar's migrant workforce had increased by more than 50% to over half a million, and that without reform, the number of fatalities would only continue to rise.

    An Amnesty report claimed Nepalese workers were "working up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, during the summer months when temperatures regularly reach 45C."

    It was published a week after Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, claimed the country was "on the right track" with regard to workers' rights.

    There has been much criticism of Qatar's use of the "Kafala system" for these workers.

    It ties migrant workers to their sponsors, preventing them from leaving for better jobs and giving employers the power to stop them leaving their positions – the employers can even retain their passports, giving rise to forced labour and blackmail.

    Early on Wednesday morning, seven current and former FIFA officials were arrested at a hotel in Zurich, Switzerland, on suspicion of corruption.

    Nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives have been named in a 47-count indictment.

    They have been charged with “racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies, among other offenses” by the United States Department of Justice.

    There is a possibility of Qatar losing the 2022 World Cup as a result of the arrests, CNBC reported.

    Maryam Moustafa

    The broadcaster quoted James Dorsey, a senior fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, who said: "[Blatter] has promised that no matter what, that Qatar [award] will not be withdrawn... Any revisiting of the (Qatari) bid would have to be driven by the legal implications with what's going on in the U.S."

    The World Cup sponsors have reacted to the news.

    None have yet pulled out of the 2022 World Cup.

    You can view more designs on Bored Panda.

    Where possible, BuzzFeed has contacted the designers of the illustrations in this post for further comment and will update in due course.