A U.S. Senate subcommittee is mulling plans to convene hearings on the topic of human rights in Qatar.
U.S. Senator Jerry Moran, (R-Kan.), said he will attempt to hold a hearing on the situation within the next 30 days in the Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance and Data Security, which he chairs.
The 2022 World Cup in Qatar has been under criticism for alleged widespread human rights abuses of migrant labourers documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other groups, including an ESPN E:60 report on the conditions associated with construction in that country.
The planned hearings come at the heels of the FBI and U.S. Justice Department investigation into corruption that has upturned world football's governing body. In related events, embattled FIFA president Sepp Blatter has also announced he will resign from his post. The news came just days after he had been re-elected to an unprecedented fifth term. Blatter said a special election would be held between December 2015 and March 2016 to appoint his successor.
"The FBI and the indictments certainly indicate that something is not right within this organisation, and then the resignation of the newly-elected ... president is further indication that something inappropriate, improper is occurring, and the part that has always interested me the most is what's on in Qatar in regard to the building of the stadiums," Moran said. "My thought is that at some point in time ... surely now in the process of reforming FIFA as new leadership takes place ... one of the things I want to explore and put a focus on is Qatar.
"Shining the light on that I think will be beneficial to ending the labour practices and the human rights violations, and this needs to be an agenda item of FIFA as they change the way, as they hopefully change the way they do business," Moran said.
The Washington Post recently reported that an estimated 1,200 migrant workers have died since Qatar started building its 2022 World Cup venues, but Qatar on Tuesday said that no workers have died during World Cup construction.
The International Trade Union Confederation said almost 2,000 people had died and warned that number could double by 2022.
But FIFA corporate communication manager Alexander Koch told German TV talkshow Jauch: "It's my strong conviction that the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar is good for the workers there."
The Qatari authorities claim that conditions for the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in the country have been improved.
This past April,13 U.S. senators sent a letter to FIFA, asking them to consider taking the 2018 World Cup out of Russia because of what they call that country's "ongoing violations of the territorial integrity of Ukraine."