Inside the labour camps of Qatar, African and Asian migrant workers building the facilities of the 2022 World Cup compete in a football tournament of their own: The Workers Cup.

In 2022, Qatar will host the biggest sporting event in the world, the FIFA World Cup. But right now, far away from the bright lights, star athletes and adoring fans, the tournament is being built on the backs of 1.6 million
migrant workers. The Workers Cup is a feature-length documentary giving voice to the men who are labouring to build sport’s grandest stage.

Sixty percent of Qatar’s total population are labourers. From India, Nepal, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and, increasingly from Africa, some of the world’s poorest people are working the lowest level jobs to ensure the World Cup can be hosted in the world’s richest country. These men work exceedingly long hours for scant salaries, and they live isolated in labour camps which are by law kept outside city limits.

With unprecedented access, the film unfolds largely inside a Qatari labour camp that the migrant workers say feels like a prison. Hidden between a highway and remote stretch of desert, the Umm Salal Camp is
intentionally out of sight and out of mind. So are the 4000 men who live there.

The film focuses on a select group in the camp who have been chosen to compete in a football tournament for labourers: The Workers Cup. The tournament is being sponsored by the same committee organising the 2022 World Cup and 24 construction companies have been invited to field a team of workers. Over the course of the tournament we follow the men as they alternate between two startling extremes: they play heroes on the football pitch, but are the lowest members of society off of it.

The film is a portrait of a handful of players on the team. It explores universal themes of ambition, aspiration and masculinity, as we see the protagonists wrangle hope, meaning, and opportunity out of dismal circumstances. The mundane is fraught with turmoil, whether it is changing jobs, talking with family back home, or going on a date. This results in a terrible toll to the psyche of our protagonists, as they are depleted of the hope that motivated them to come to Qatar in the first place

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/218488667

Director: Adam Sobel

Producer: Ramzy Haddad, Rosie Garthwaite

Q&A Discussion

Chair

Dorothy Byrne

Dorothy Byrne is Chair of the Ethical Journalism Network and Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4.  She was appointed in September 2003, having previously edited the award-winning Dispatches. During her tenure, the Channel’s news and current affairs programmes have won numerous BAFTA, RTS, Emmy Awards and others. In 2014, Dispatches won the RTS Journalism Awards for both best Home and best International Current Affairs, the first time one strand won both awards, and Channel Four News won the RTS Journalism Award for Best News Programme of the Year for the second year running.

Speakers

Rosie Garthwaite

Rosie Garthwaite is currently the Series Producer for BBC Arabic Digital Investigative Documentaries. She is also the founder of Mediadante; an award-winning independent production company making films about the Middle East region for a global audience. She is producer of The Workers Cup, that premiered on the opening night of Sundance 2017. In 2015 the International Emmy-award winning film Escape from Isis she developed for Channel 4 and PBS was referenced by the UK Prime Minister in a key speech and shown to the U.S. Congress. In 2014 she exec produced a CINE Golden Eagle award-winning series following the first Saudi woman up Everest. She is a former British army officer and author of the award-winning book How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone published by Bloomsbury in 2011.

Mustafa Qadri

Mustafa Qadri is the Founder and Executive Director of Equidem Research and Consulting, a specialist human rights and labour rights investigations consultancy. He is a human rights research and advocacy expert with over 15 years of interdisciplinary experience in government and public international law, journalism and the non-governmental sector. Mustafa is the author of several landmark human rights reports into the construction industry, civil and political rights issues, and media freedom, including most recently The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game – the first independent human rights investigation to uncover labour abuse on Qatar 2022 World Cup construction sites.

Philippe Auclair

Philippe Auclair has been a correspondent with France Football for over a decade, and is a prolific freelance journalist on both sides of the Channel. He is the author of the award-winning Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King and a bestselling author in his native France. He lives in London.

Ethical Journalism Network

The Ethical Journalism Network is an alliance of reporters, editors and publishers aiming to strengthen journalism around the world, working to build trust in news media through training, education and research.

In partnership with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) the EJN is running a fellowship programme for journalists covering labour migration in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar,  Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The EJN’s studies and guidelines on migration have been presented to the United Nations in New York and other international forums.

To find out how to support the Ethical Journalism Network visit: http:// ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/ support

A panel discussion focused on The Fight Against Daesh made for a timely first First Wednesday of the year at the Frontline Club. The packed event on 6 January was chaired by David Loyn, foreign correspondent for the BBC for over 30 years. The speakers included Richard Spencer, Middle East editor of The Daily and Sunday Telegraph; Shiraz Maher, research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College; and Robin Yassin-Kassab, journalist and author of The Road From Damascus and most recently co-author with Leila al-Shami of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War. Completing the panel was Azadeh Moaveni, lecturer in journalism at Kingston University and former Middle East correspondent for TIME magazine, and author of Lipstick Jihad and Honeymoon in Tehran.

Fantastic debate @frontlineclub last night about what’s happening with Isis/Daesh…Always better live than on TV! pic.twitter.com/jBMWx6JbmI

— The CollectiveLondon (@Collective_Lon) January 7, 2016

From the outset, the panel approached discussions on Daesh with a thorough evaluation of the developments in Syria and surrounding region. The discussion took a turn away from the media hype surrounding Daesh towards the geo-political realities and factions at play. From Islamist and moderate groups within Syria to Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Western allies and Turkey, few stones were left unturned.

Yassin-Kassab and Spencer affirmed the widely-accepted notion that Daesh was created by the vacuum left after the destruction of Iraq, and directly enabled by Bashar al-Assad’s timely decision to release prominent jihadis from prison. Yassin-Kassab summarised the effects: “He [Assad] needed to terrify the West and he has been very successful at that. Here we are tonight discussing what to do about the enemy Daesh and not what to do about the man who has killed 95% of the people in Syria over the last 5 years: Bashar al-Assad.”

Jabhat al-Nusra, the Al-Qaeda affiliate operating in Syria, was discussed at some length. The panelists agreed that, unlike Daesh, Jabhat al-Nusra’s more tolerant and classical grassroots approach would remain deeply embedded in Syrian society in the longterm.  It was also agreed that Al-Qaeda more generally has had to reassess its tactical boundaries in order to distance itself from the relentless barbarianism of Daesh.

Maher said: “Al-Qaeda over the last 15 years has been on an incredibly steep learning curve. They have learnt far more about warfare, insurgency and human terrains than we have and that’s why, to put it very bluntly, they are winning.”

Yassin-Kassab used Russia’s ongoing bombardment in Syria – supposedly targeting Daesh – to argue that outside players are worsening the situation. He said: “80% of Russian strikes have fallen on the people that drove IS out of their areas.”

Iran was also scrutinised for its relentless military support of Assad. However, when asked by Loyn if there were circumstances under which Iran would “dump” its long term alley Assad, Moaveni said: “Absolutely, I think Iran would dump Assad in a moment if it comes to that… For them, it’s important to keep some key supply routes open to some political faction that is friendly to Tehran.”

When Spencer disagreed with Moaveni – suggesting instead that Iran was more dependent on Assad than Russia was – Moaveni pointed to the double standards of Western relations with Saudi and Iran. She said:
“It’s only in the last year or two that things are shifting a bit, that you have open discussions in editorial pages about the reliability of Saudi as an ally and if it makes sense to keep Iran permanently at a distance.”

The recent decision by the UK government to bomb Syria decidedly split the panel. Maher supported the notion and warned of the danger of outsourcing the UK’s security program in not acting militarily. He said: “Daesh is a counterterrorism problem as far as we are concerned; Syria is a much bigger problem which we are not going to fix.”

L-r: Azadeh Moaveni, Shiraz Maher, David Loyn, Robin Yassin-Kassab and Richard Spencer

Moaveni, Spencer and Yassin-Kassab expressed their skepticism of how bombing Daesh could be effective in the long term. Spencer said: “Bombing IS without a strategy for the whole Middle East is a disaster… If the Western allies – Britain, France, America – don’t stick together and form common policies then western policy will fall apart.”

Yassin-Kassab criticised the dismissive approach the West maintains towards the Southern Front, the Syrian opposition unaffiliated with Islamic groups. He said: “They [Southern Front] are dependent on aid from a military operations room in Jordan, and the West, the Americans, keep telling the Jordanians and Saudis not to allow them the anti-tank and particularly anti-aircraft weapons that they need now.”

One audience member asked the panel what they predicted for the region in the future. The panelists agreed that Assad would remain in some shape or form, but Moaveni predicted a “vast kingdom emerging” in the Persian Gulf, united under a Sunni leadership. Maher, on the other hand, saw a “federalised system of government” in the Levant. Yassin-Kassab preferred not to speculate, saying: “you can’t tell what direction we are going as we are going into so many directions at once.”

From the taboo of premarital sex to trouble in the conjugal bed; from sexed-up writing to censored movies; from debates over sexual education and abortion to the incendiary topic of unwed motherhood; from the booming business of sex work to the struggles of those who break the heterosexual mould, El Feki examines the complexity of sexual intolerance and liberty in the Arab world and how it is entwined in religion, tradition, politics and economics.

Shereen El Feki is a writer, broadcaster, and academic who started her professional life in medical science before going on to become an award-winning journalist with The Economist and a presenter with Al Jazeera English. She is the former vice-chair of the UN’s Global Commission on HIV and the Law, as well as a TED Global Fellow. She writes for a number of publications.

 

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Wadah Khanfar oversaw the creation of Al Jazeera English and was credited with revolutionising the Arab media landscape before he stepped down as director general in September 2011.

Having begun his career with the Arab news organisation analysing African affairs, he took on the director general role in 2006 and was to steer Al Jazeera as it responded to the tumultuous events that began sweeping across the Arab world in January 2011. Commentators compared the Arab Spring for Al Jazeera to CNN’s coming of age during the early days of the Gulf War in 1991.

With an increasing global presence,  Al Jazeera, which is based in the Qatari capital Doha and owned by the state’s emir, has also been criticised for pulling its punches over the uprising in the Gulf state of Bahrain and for its lack of coverage on events in Qatar itself. Banned in the United States, it has also been criticised for biased reporting and for being anti-American and pro-Islamic.

Wadah Khanfar will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow to discuss the rise of Al Jazeera, the role he played in its development and where the news organisation can go from here.

In association with The Middle East Monitor

Picture credit: jurvetson/Flickr

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Watch the event here. 

Wadah Khanfar oversaw the creation of Al Jazeera English and was credited with revolutionising the Arab media landscape before he stepped down as director general in September 2011.

Having begun his career with the Arab news organisation analysing African affairs, he took on the director general role in 2006 and was to steer Al Jazeera as it responded to the tumultuous events that began sweeping across the Arab world in January 2011. Commentators compared the Arab Spring for Al Jazeera to CNN’s coming of age during the early days of the Gulf War in 1991.

With an increasing global presence,  Al Jazeera, which is based in the Qatari capital Doha and previously partially owned by the state’s Emir, has also been criticised for pulling its punches over the uprising in the Gulf state of Bahrain and for its lack of coverage on events in Qatar itself. With limited access in the United States, it has also been criticised for biased reporting and for being anti-American and pro-Islamic.

Wadah Khanfar will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow to discuss the rise of Al Jazeera, the role he played in its development and where the news organisation can go from here.

Picture credit: jurvetson/Flickr

By Nicole Hunt

Anders Behring Breivik, the man who admitted to setting off the 22 July bomb in Oslo, killing eight people, before killing 69 people on the island of Utoya, makes his first public appearance at Oslo City Court on Monday. On 12 September, the court rejected a police request for another closed door hearing, meaning media and victims’ families will be able to attend.

In Geneva, the UN Global Fund releases the findings of a four-month independent review into its financial safeguards, following accusations of mismanagement of funds in recipient countries.

Monday is also the six month anniversary of the beginning of military action in Libya. Forces from the US, the UK, France, Canada, UAE and Qatar began enforcing the no-fly zone authorised by UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 on 19 March.

The trial of seven Italian scientists charged with manslaughter for failing to predict the April 2009 earthquake that killed over 300 people kicks off in L’Aquila on Tuesday. The scientists, who made up the city’s Great Risks Commission, are accused of failing to warn people of the potential risk of an earthquake and convincing people not to leave town a week before the earthquake struck.

In a Paris court, former News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck and representatives for News Group Newspapers appear charged with breaching France’s privacy and defamation laws in relation to a 2008 story about former FIA president Max Mosley. Mosley was awarded £60,000 in damages by the UK High Court in 2008, but the European Court of Human Rights rejected an application by Mosley in May that would have required media to inform a person before publishing a story containing their private information.

Amid concerns of potential post-election violence, Zambians go to the polls to elect their president and members of the National Assembly. Levy Mwanawasa won the 2006 election, but died in August 2008 and was replaced by Rupiah Banda, who is seeking his first full term.

The UN General Assembly general debate opens in New York on Wednesday, with all eyes on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who, barring last-minute diplomatic developments, is expected to seek a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood.

On Thursday, a verdict is expected in the first case brought in under France’s ‘burka ban’ laws. Two women in the town of Meaux were arrested for wearing the niqab veil in May, with one of them banned from attending the last hearing because her face was still covered.

At the UN General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe are both scheduled to speak. Ahmadinejad’s past speeches have prompted walkouts from some delegations, while Mugabe’s have typically been anti-western. British Prime Minister David Cameron, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ivorian President Alassane Ouatarra are also on the bill.

The week draws to a close with some high-profile court hearings and elections. Closing arguments are set to begin in Amanda Knox’s murder appeal in Perugia on Friday, while Egyptian courts are busy with the testimony of ruling military council member Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi at former President Hosni Mubarak’s trial on Saturday in Cairo, as well as the verdict in the Khaled Said murder trial in Alexandria. Two policemen are on trial for Said’s June 2010 death, which prompted widespread protests in Egypt at a time when police were rarely prosecuted.

In Bahrain, by-elections are held to replace 11 opposition lawmakers who resigned in March over government crackdowns on anti-regime protesters.

French Senate elections take place on Sunday, with half of the 346 seats up for grabs. Party performances will be closely watched ahead of next year’s presidential elections.

In Freiburg, Pope Benedict XVI wraps up a four-day visit to Germany to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his ordination as a priest