"In World Cup Run-Up, Qatar Pressed U.N. Agency Not to Investigate Abuses"

... Qatar embarked on a yearslong campaign of political maneuvering that helped turn the International Labor Organization, the United Nations workers’ rights watchdog, from critic to ally, an examination by The New York Times found.

The campaign included free travel for a labor leader; an intense and divisive lobbying effort to head off an investigation; a parliamentary hearing with planted questions; and a $25 million Qatari contribution to the labor organization as part of a package of promised changes, according to documents and interviews with more than a dozen current and former labor officials. Finally, on the eve of the World Cup, officials with the Qatari labor ministry asked the U.N. agency to refrain from any commentary that could overshadow the tournament....

A confidential report by the International Trade Union Confederation, which sits on the U.N. labor agency’s governing body, found that the confederation had “operational, financial, constitutional, and political” vulnerabilities to corruption. The report, obtained by The Times, cited an urgent need to protect against “threats posed to the global trade union movement.” ...

By the time the World Cup kicked off, the agency had quieted its criticism and withdrawn a complaint accusing Qatar of forced labor and exploitation. ...

Labor rights in Qatar have improved since the International Labor Organization opened its Doha office in 2018. Qatar set a minimum wage and said workers could switch jobs without their employers’ permission. Labor officials said they won those improvements through delicate negotiations. Criticism, they said, would only have undermined that progress.

But labor advocates, human rights groups and some politicians said they were stunned by what they saw as one-sided public statements that minimized problems. State Department reports, for example, cited continued examples of forced labor. Migrant construction workers and housekeepers were trapped in long-term debt by employers who confiscated their passports and bank cards and withheld their pay — conditions that some human rights groups have likened to modern slavery....