GENEVA (AN) — The U.N. labor agency opened its annual conference focused on social justice but elected the labor minister of Qatar, whose nation has been widely criticized for human rights abuses and a lack of strong protections for migrant workers, as its conference president.
Qatar's Labor Minister Ali bin Samikh al-Marri was elected without opposition to preside over the 111th International Labor Conference at its opening on Monday in the Palais des Nations, the United Nations' European headquarters. The conference lasts 12 days.
A Qatari official has said between 400 and 500 migrant workers died working on the 2022 FIFA World Cup hosted by Qatar, a nation of 3 million people that relies on 2 million migrant workers for 95% of its workforce.
Normally the conference leader's election is "just a formality," Catelene Passchier, a Dutch trade union official who chairs a workers' group within the International Labor Organization's governing body, told the conference during a live webcast.
Qatar recently has been "the subject of scrutiny of the ILO supervisory system regarding the violations of fundamental rights of big numbers of migrant workers in the runup to the football World Cup," she noted.
Though Qatar engaged in talks with ILO and international trade union officials, she said, "after the World Cup some serious doubts have been expressed by unions active on the ground if there was sufficient commitment to the necessary further implementation to address the continuous plight of migrant workers."
From World Cup to European scandal
International trade unions submitted a complaint to the ILO in 2014 alleging Qatar was not resolving violations of labor rights, which led to an agreement to improve working and living conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers.
FIFA's quadrennial international football tournament, however, drew more attention to Qatar, where "over the last decade, reports of labor exploitation of migrants and even forced labor have been widespread," according to the ILO.
A team led by ILO Director-General Gilbert Houngbo helped facilitated talks in recent weeks with Qatar to speed up reforms. "We are looking forward to the positive results of this reengagement," Passchier said. "We would certainly wish to see similar processes happening in other countries in the region and beyond."
In European Parliament, a Qatari cash-and-influence peddling probe has unfolding since late last year. Belgian authorities began investigating a suspected criminal infiltration of the Parliament, resulting in the arrests of six people on charges of money laundering, corruption, and criminal conspiracy.
That included the Parliament's former vice president, Eva Kaili, and her father, who was intercepted by police at the Sofitel hotel in Brussels just minutes by foot from the Parliament, carrying a suitcase containing €600,000 in cash.
Subsequent searches of former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri’s residence and the home Kaili shares with her husband, Francesco Giorgi, a policy advisor inside the Parliament who also was arrested, uncovered a multitude of expensive affixes suspected to have been gifts from Qatar, plus more suitcases of money.
In total, authorities seized more than €1.5 million in suspected bribes. Kaili, who was one of the Parliament’s vice presidents until that title was taken away from her on Tuesday, maintains her innocence.
Social justice, delayed
Al-Marri pledged to do his best to guide the conference based on its longstanding traditions, guiding principles and rules, and to "spare no effort" to ensure the conference is a success. He also named climate change as a key challenge.
"We are meeting at a time when the world is facing multiple crises, at a time when a great uncertainty prevails,' he said. "We gather here together at the right time to discuss issues pertaining to workers, employers and governments all around the world."
Delegates from 187 nations will debate ways of tackling the many global challenges such as climate change, the pandemic, wars and conflicts, and inflation that have been "significantly delaying, if not reversing, progress towards social justice" in the workplace, according to Houngbo's report on Friday to the upcoming assembly.
This year’s conference will include a two-day World of Work Summit next week that will includes speeches by Houngbo, heads of state or government and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.
'Deep-rooted inequalities'
Houngbo told the conference's opening session that the global labor market shows tremendous disparities. Lower-income countries aren't recovering well from the pandemic, due to soaring debt levels compounded by high inflation and rising interest rates.
"The benefits derived from the 4th Industrial Revolution, which promises a radical transformation of our productive structures, demographic changes and the overriding need to move towards a low-carbon economy offer opportunities for a better and brighter future for all of us," said Houngbo.
"However, at the same time we still see deep-rooted inequalities. It's absurd to see that even now 4 billion of our fellow citizens have absolutely no access to social protection, and that 214 million workers earn a sum which puts them below the poverty line," he said.
"How do we justify women earning on average even today 20% less per hour for equal work? I strongly feel that we cannot simply stand by and watch as child labor reemerges and force labor increases."
