Here is a list of the top 10 celebrities from Africa. They all put their fame to good use to help people in need who are from their hometowns and throughout Africa.
1. Chinua Achebe — Nigerian Novelist, Publisher and Educator
Achebe was born in Nigeria on November 16, 1930. He recently died at the age of 82 on March 21, 2013. He taught at different universities in America and is known for his book, “Things Fall Apart,” one of his earlier pieces of writings that was published in 1958. “Things Fall Apart” is what led him to be called the “patriarch of the African novel.” Many of his writing pieces go back to his Nigerian roots.
2. Youssou N’dour — Senegalese Musician
N’dour was born in 1959 in Dakar, Senegal. His most popular music came out in the late 1980s and 1990s. In 2004, the Rolling Stone Magazine wrote that he was “perhaps the most famous singer alive.” N’dour had the tendency to mix pop and rock with sabar, which is the traditional dance music of Senegal. N’dour has toured with stars like Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Tracy Chapman and Dido. He has been the subject of two award-winning films: “Retour à Gorée” and “Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love.” He also owns a night club, a radio station and a television station. N’dour is a UNICEF ambassador to help bring an end to the humanitarian crisis in the horn of Africa.
3. Didier Drogba — Ivorian Soccer Player
Drogba is a world-pronounced soccer player, but he is most well-known for helping end war during the civil war in Cote D’Ivoire. Drogba fell to his knees on live television after his team qualified for the World Cup, pleading that Cote D’Ivoire give up the war, and it worked. In 2009 he donated $5 million to help with the construction of a hospital in his hometown of Abidjan.
4. Angelique Kidjo — Beninoise Musician
Kidjo is a Grammy award-winning musician. She has collaborated with Alicia Keys, Josh Groban and Carlos Santana. Kidjo owns her own nonprofit organization, Batonga Foundation, which is based in Washington. It promotes and funds education for African girls. She is also a UNICEF Goodwill ambassador.
5. Akon — Senegalese Musician
Akon has sold millions of his three studio-recorded albums. He co-owns a record label called Kon Live that helped get Lady Gaga and T-Pain’s career started. He also owns Konvict clothing, and he founded Konfidence Foundation, which promotes education and health causes in Senegal and elsewhere in Africa.
6. Wole Soyinka — Nigerian Playwright
In 1986, Soyinka became the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Soyinka has produced “The Lion and the Jewel,” “A Dance of the Forests,” “The Strong Breed” and 17 other plays.
7. Salif Keita — Malian Musician
Keita was denied by his family because he decided to pursue his career as a musician, which was considered beneath his noble family’s status. He was banished when he was 18 years old because of the superstition that albinos were bad luck. His latest album was decimated to stop discrimination against albinos in Africa and the rest of the world.
8. Yvonne Chaka Chaka — South African Musician
Chaka Chaka is known as the “Princess of Africa.” She was known for her girly pop music. She now devotes her time to her work as a United Nations Goodwill ambassador and representative of Africa.
9. Oumou Sangare — Malian Musician
Sangare often performed music known as Wassoulou. Wassoulou is often sung by women. This music consists of lyrics having to do with women’s rights issues and feminism. Sangare is a United Nations Goodwill ambassador and was named an official ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2003.
10. Femi Kuti — Nigerian Musician
Kuti uses his music to downsize corruption, poverty and other socioeconomic issues prevalent in Nigeria and Africa through his lyrics. In his album, “Fight to Win” (which sold over 500,000 copies,) he collaborated with Common, Most Def and Jaguar Fight.
— Priscilla Rodarte
Sources: All Music, Biography, Forbes, NY Times
Photo: The Economist
Father Invents Bionic Pancreas for Diabetic Son
Type 1 diabetes diagnoses break the hearts of parents to almost half a million children worldwide each year. Once caught, the implications of a lifestyle change are immediate and lifelong, and worried parents will continuously contemplate their child’s safety and future.
Such was the case for Ed Damiano, who was told that his infant son David was a Type 1 diabetic at only 11 months old. From that moment on, Ed and his wife, Toby Milgrome, became 24-hour human monitors of their son’s blood sugar levels. Diabetes is a condition that does not sleep. As a matter of fact, sleep is one of the most dangerous events of a diabetic’s life since blood sugar levels can surge, which can result in death.
Ed has gone as far as to make it a habit to check his son’s levels in the middle of the night while he sleeps, even now that he is 15 years old. He has also displayed another significant response to address his son’s disease – developing a “bionic pancreas.”
Ed is part of a team of scientists at Boston University who are now pushing the bionic pancreas into its first long-term testing period with volunteer diabetics after recent approval. Previously, 20 adults and 32 adolescents monitored in hotel rooms for five days were hooked up to the devices with almost full dietary freedom. The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that the participants were healthier than when administering levels themselves.
Traditionally, diabetics test blood sugar levels several times a day with a portable device that uses small blood samples. If blood sugar is too low, the diabetic takes a glucagon hormone injection; if blood sugar is high, they take an insulin injection to lower it. A diabetic’s pancreas does not produce these hormones naturally, making sugar toxic to their blood.
The new bionic pancreas automatically checks blood sugar levels regularly. It is secured to the patient’s abdomen with tiny tubes inserted under the patient’s skin. The device decides when to make glucagon or insulin increases without any manual operation. Levels can be read real-time with the use of an app on an Apple gadget.
Study participants such as Ariana Coster, a 23-year-old diabetic, expressed how great the feeling of neglect can be – even simply eating a cookie without having to check blood sugar levels. For David and his parents, they are just relieved that the device is likely to be ready by the time he goes off to college in a couple of years.
“My whole life I’ve just known – just had this knowledge that my dad is going to have this bionic pancreas out when I go to college,” says David. “I’m confident in him. He works really hard – really hard.”
— Edward Heinrich
Sources: Time, NPR, USA Today
Photo: Public Broadcasting
MedShare International
Established in 1998 with a mission of “bridging the gap between surplus and need,” MedShare International is an innovative nonprofit that brings medical equipment and supplies to the developing nations where they are needed the most. More than 2 million tons of medical waste are generated by hospitals in the U.S. every year. At the same time, 10 million young children in developing nations die every year simply because they lack access to proper medical care.
MedShare takes the steps necessary for eliminating that gap by collecting those supplies and delivering them to the developing world. To date, they have delivered in excess of $100 million in medical supplies to over 95 developing countries, making them one of the biggest nonprofit investors in health care in poor communities.
How does it work? Imagine you go to the hospital and need surgery. Your surgeon may not necessarily need all of the tools he is supplied for your operation, especially if there are no complications. However, FDA regulations prevent the doctor from using any of those supplies on another patient, even if they are still sterile and in their original packaging. MedShare collects these medical products and sorts, ships and distributes them. The best part? Medical centers in the developing nations MedShare serves can request certain supplies, allowing MedShare to customize shipments to fit those centers’ specific needs.
Making a concerted effort to attend to the medical needs of the poor is one of the most important steps to eliminating poverty. Illness prevents individuals from escaping poverty by precluding them from seeking or keeping employment, attending to the needs of themselves and their families and accessing other resources.
MedShare recognizes the link between poverty and health care and has been working for over 15 years to reduce the prevalence of the former by providing the tools necessary for the latter. Many medical centers in the developing world possess both the staff and the technical knowledge necessary to adequately treat illness, but lack the proper infrastructure or supplies. The equipment that MedShare provides has saved thousands of lives, and as an added effect, has also kept millions of tons of waste from being unnecessarily dumped into American landfills. One would be hard pressed to find a nonprofit that does more for the environment domestically and for health care abroad. MedShare is a true leader in both of these realms.
— Elise L. Riley
Sources: Health Poverty Action, MedShare
Photo: Good Health Blog
Russia Cuts Off Gas to Ukraine
On June 16, 2014, tensions between Russia and Ukraine worsened after Russia’s state-owned company, Gazprom, cut off gas headed for Ukraine.
June 16 was the final day for Russia and Ukraine to come to an agreement about the gas dispute. Representatives from Ukraine, Russia and the European Union met over the weekend but were unable to reach an agreement.
With no agreement about the unpaid $2 billion debt installment the company demanded for June 16, a portion of the $4.5 billion total debt that Ukraine owes the company led Gazprom to declare that it will only deliver gas that has already been paid for.
Ukraine disputes the amount that Gazprom has stated it owes and also requests a new future price.
The main cause for the dispute can be traced back to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia that led to an 80 percent price increase of gas, reaching $485.50 per thousand cubic meters of gas in April. Although some reductions were made following recent talks, they were still above the average $377.50 per thousand cubic meters Gazprom charged other European countries in 2013, and more still than the previous $268 per thousand cubic meters Ukraine used to pay.
Russia has stated that it will continue to provide oil for the rest of Europe. More than 30 percent of Europe’s demand is supplied by Russia, of which half must pass through Ukraine.
Since the cut off has occurred in June, the vulnerability of Ukraine and the rest of Europe to a possible shortage are low. However, as the cut off continues, the urgency to find a resolution increases. When July comes around, Ukraine and the rest of Europe generally begin to completely fill their storage tanks in preparation for the winter.
Tensions between Ukraine and Russia have continued to increase in the backdrop of the failed deal. In addition to escalating violence in Ukraine, Gazprom has attracted controversy with its decision to build an exclusive gas route despite violating Europe’s open access laws.
With the continuing escalation, it is unlikely a resolution to the gas crisis will occur in the near future. Although E.U. leaders are expected to discuss the crisis during the summit in Brussels on June 26, the E.U. has told its members to conduct stress tests to examine the potential effects of a disruption.
A potential disruption could bode poorly for those in poverty throughout Europe, especially in the winter months. Hopefully an agreement will emerge before the cold comes.
— William Ying
Sources: CNN, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC
Photo: CNBC
Congressional Foreign Aid for Refugees
The recent increase in violence in Iraq has many worried about a new uptick in refugee and asylum cases as fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people in the last couple of weeks. Compounding on the already critical Syrian crisis, the uptick in internally displaced persons in Iraq is worrisome for countries around the world.
Encouragingly, Congress recently released their foreign aid budget with more money allocated toward refugee accounts than the initial White House request. The House budget, which provides over $3 billion for refugee accounts, is more than the President’s request of $2 billion.
The Congressional foreign aid for refugees, which stands at $48.3 billion in total, allows for more refugee aid as a result of the ongoing crisis in Syria and the recent surge in violence in Iraq.
To date, the U.S. has already begun to draw on the refugee account in order to deal with newly displaced Iraqis fleeing from areas contested by the Sunni group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS.) The U.S. refugee caseload is already substantial and receives the largest amount of requests for asylum in the world.
Refugees are people who have been forced to flee their country due to persecution, war or violence, and who generally have a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular group. An internally displaced person differs from a refugee in that they have not crossed an international border and are not protected under international law or eligible to receive aid.
According to a 2012 U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) report, by the end of 2012 there were more than 45.2 million people in situations of displacement, more than the any time since 1994. Fifty-five percent of all refugees listed in the UNHCR report come from five war-afflicted countries: Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Syria and Sudan.
As the crises in Iraq becomes more critical, the surge in displaced Iraqis which strains already stretched resources both internationally and domestically will need to be addressed by the international community.
The Congressional foreign aid budget is a good first step in ensuring appropriate resources are allocated to deal with the refugees, as these crises not only threaten the stability of each country, but of the regions as well.
— Andrea Blinkhorn
Sources: Politico, UN Refugees, The Guardian, UNHCR
Photo: Asia News
Islamic Relief USA
Founded in 1993 in California, Islamic Relief USA is a relief organization that works toward alleviating many of the issues that plague developing countries. Their mission statement explains that they work to “alleviate suffering, hunger, illiteracy and diseases worldwide regardless of color, race, religion or creed, and to provide aid in a compassionate and dignified manner.”
With partner organizations in over 35 countries worldwide, Islamic Relief USA supports projects revolving around health and nutrition, orphans, water and sanitation in close to 30 countries. The organization emphasizes implementing campaigns in response to problems like natural disasters and children in need, hoping to establish a more stable world.
Despite their humanitarian efforts, connections to the Muslim Brotherhood have pointed to possible corruption within the organization. The parent organization, Islamic Relief Worldwide, was founded by Hani Al-Bana, a former trustee of a group called Muslim Aid. There is question about how deep-seated the Muslim Brotherhood influence is within the organization.
In addition to possible corruption, the financial practices of Islamic Relief USA have come into question in the past few years as discrepancies in their reported numbers came to light. Prior to 2011, the organization claimed that 93.8 percent of its contributions were spent on charity, while the remainder was left for overhead. In reality, however, only 74 percent of the contributions were spent on charity.
As of 2012, Charity Navigator reported Islamic Relief USA had a score of 70 out of 70 for transparency and accountability, indicating that since the issues involving their finances, things appear to be on the mend. With a total contribution of $62,288,900 in 2012, 88.8 percent of this total went to charity.
With information about possible corruption and financial discrepancies competing with charity success stories, Islamic Relief USA is a challenge to decipher. The improvements in transparency and percentage of donations funneled toward charity are promising, however, for the future of Islamic Relief USA and its methods of aiding the world.
— Maggie Wagner
Sources: Charity Navigator, Islamic Relief USA 1, Clarion Project, Forbes
Photo: Islamic Relief USA 2
AMIGOS de Las Américas
Amigos de Las Américas (AMIGOS) was founded by youth pastor Guy Bevil in 1965 when he and a small group of young adults landed in Honduras to administer polio vaccines in isolated, rural communities.
He knew that people lived off the beaten path, and wanted to provide health services for those who would not normally have access to them. Nearly 50 years later, his philosophy is strongly upheld in the organization.
Amigos de Las Américas has a mission: to make young people leaders and improve underdeveloped communities while doing so. Volunteers are high school or college aged. Summer programs are generally four to nine weeks in length, though college students can take a gap semester or year. All must have a base level of Spanish and an interest in changing the world.
Over 700 volunteers received training in leadership and specific community development projects annually. Volunteers are placed with host families, which gives them a chance to improve their Spanish, learn about the host culture, share their own culture and further integrate into the community.
Accepted applicants to the program must pay a program fee; 80 percent of this goes to cover travel, additional housing and meals. The remaining 20 percent is used for the organization’s administrative expenses.
AMIGOS operates in nine different countries: Paraguay, Panama, Nicaragua, Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, The Dominican Republic, Colombia and Costa Rica. Community development projects cover a wide range of services, but are largely dependent on AMIGOS partners.
AMIGOS partners with locally based organizations, often nonprofit, to ensure that its volunteers are doing effective and needed work within a community. There are 25 partners in total.
Organizations like Servicios de Salud de Oaxaca in Mexico and Prodia of Peru, work mainly in health services, sanitation and nutrition awareness. Fundación Paraguaya and Panama’s Ministereo de Deasarollo Social provide investment services in local projects and individual enterprises. Fútbol con Corazón provides workshops on nutrition and life skills to more than 2,000 children in Columbia. This is in addition, of course, to soccer training.
Some might ask why AMIGOS focuses its efforts on Latin America when there is poverty still in the United States. The organization says it builds leaders, and that the compassion and leadership skills learned while on programs abroad are brought back to the U.S.
— Olivia Kostreva
Sources: AMIGOS, Go Overseas , US Gap Year Fairs
Photo: Vimeo
5 Ways the World Cup Has Failed to Relieve Poverty
Destitute life in the slums of Rio de Janeiro has changed very little over the years. The streets may be currently adorned in green and yellow, but the quality of life continues to be the same.
1. The Most Expensive World Cup in History
The projected cost for hosting the games is more than $11 billion, which makes it the most expensive World Cup since it began 84 years ago. Citizens are complaining that the government of Brazil is spending so much money on the World Cup while many of its citizens are living in poverty. Paying for this World Cup has come out of these citizens’ taxpayer dollars.
2. Spent Billions of Dollars; Are There More Important Endeavors?
The money that was spent on the World Cup, on structures like stadiums and other sporting infrastructure, takes away from money that could have been spent on basic needs that many Brazilian citizens lack, such as education, better health care and adequate housing.
3. Corruption in the Brazilian Government and FIFA
The Brazilian government has been accused of overspending and corruption. The cost of building the Mane Garrincha Stadium came out to be $900 million, triple the original amount, largely due to fraud and corruption. FIFA, which has always been known for corruption, will be gaining all profits from the World Cup, while Brazil is paying the costs. The gains will not go to the people who really need it in Brazil, even though the Brazilian government has spent so much money on the World Cup. Many Brazilians can’t afford tickets to the games, or even afford to travel to protests against the World Cup, while their taxpayer dollars have gone towars paying for the World Cup.
4. Providing More Business For Sex Tourism
Sex tourism is encouraged in Brazil, and hotels and taxis are even part of the network that links clients with women and young girls. In Recife, one of the World Cup sites and also one of the poorest parts of Brazil, 120,000 soccer tickets were sold to foreigners. The women and young girls know that foreigners coming have a lot of money and “they come to Brazil to have fun.” A handful of sex workers have even taken English classes in order to negotiate better. The World Cup was originally sold to Brazilians as an economic boost because of the rewards of greater tourism. Unfortunately, one of the facets of tourism in Brazil is the sex industry, and this increase in tourism is perpetuating the sad cycle of abuse in the industry.
5. Encouraging Child Exploitation
Sadly, the sex industry in Brazil exploits children as well. Recife has one of the worst records in the world when it comes to child exploitation. In Sao Lourenço, where the Recife stadium is located, some of the street vendors not only sell food, but also their children for sexual exploitation. Child exploitation is so out of control in Brazil that officials are worried that tourists coming to Brazil for the World Cup will not respect their legislation on sex tourism.
— Colleen Moore
Sources: A.V. Club, WNCN, CBC, Philly.com, CNBC
Photo: Forbes
What is the FORTE Act?
Human trafficking is an inhumane act against fundamental human rights. It is sad but true that people are smuggled and traded like commodities and slaves. According to the report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC,) the most common form of human trafficking is sexual exploitation, which makes up 79 percent of human trafficking instances. The second form of trafficking is labor exploitation. The largest population involved in human trafficking is children. In some parts of Africa and Mekong region, children account for more than 50 percent of trafficking victims.
Due to the urgent situation of human trafficking problem, the U.S. House of Representatives is trying to pass the bipartisan bill called the Fraudulent Overseas Recruitment and Trafficking Elimination Act, also known as the FORTE Act.
The FORTE Act would ensure that provision of foreign assistance does not contribute to human trafficking. Instead, it would fight human trafficking by proving better transparency in the recruitment of foreign workers.
This act will make the government provide more transparency when hiring workers abroad, thus cutting down labor trafficking — the second largest exploitation. The act requires employers using foreign labor to notify the Department of Labor of recruiters’ identities annually. It requires the Secretary of Labor to maintain a list of contractors and U.S. consulates to receive complaints from the workers. It also makes requirements of foreign labor contractors who bring laborers into the U.S. to prevent trafficking, such as registration.
In short, the success of this bill means more clarity in labor contracts and more regulations over labor recruiters.
The crime of human trafficking is mostly underreported due to its underground nature. This act will bring the issue to the light, put more transparency in the labor market and effectively decrease labor trafficking. In addition to decreasing human trafficking in foreign countries, this act will also help to regulate the American domestic labor market.
— Jing Xu
Sources: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, House of Representatives Foreign Affairs, Catholic Relief Services
Photo: Jamaica Observer
Top 10 Celebrities from Africa
Here is a list of the top 10 celebrities from Africa. They all put their fame to good use to help people in need who are from their hometowns and throughout Africa.
1. Chinua Achebe — Nigerian Novelist, Publisher and Educator
Achebe was born in Nigeria on November 16, 1930. He recently died at the age of 82 on March 21, 2013. He taught at different universities in America and is known for his book, “Things Fall Apart,” one of his earlier pieces of writings that was published in 1958. “Things Fall Apart” is what led him to be called the “patriarch of the African novel.” Many of his writing pieces go back to his Nigerian roots.
2. Youssou N’dour — Senegalese Musician
N’dour was born in 1959 in Dakar, Senegal. His most popular music came out in the late 1980s and 1990s. In 2004, the Rolling Stone Magazine wrote that he was “perhaps the most famous singer alive.” N’dour had the tendency to mix pop and rock with sabar, which is the traditional dance music of Senegal. N’dour has toured with stars like Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Tracy Chapman and Dido. He has been the subject of two award-winning films: “Retour à Gorée” and “Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love.” He also owns a night club, a radio station and a television station. N’dour is a UNICEF ambassador to help bring an end to the humanitarian crisis in the horn of Africa.
3. Didier Drogba — Ivorian Soccer Player
Drogba is a world-pronounced soccer player, but he is most well-known for helping end war during the civil war in Cote D’Ivoire. Drogba fell to his knees on live television after his team qualified for the World Cup, pleading that Cote D’Ivoire give up the war, and it worked. In 2009 he donated $5 million to help with the construction of a hospital in his hometown of Abidjan.
4. Angelique Kidjo — Beninoise Musician
Kidjo is a Grammy award-winning musician. She has collaborated with Alicia Keys, Josh Groban and Carlos Santana. Kidjo owns her own nonprofit organization, Batonga Foundation, which is based in Washington. It promotes and funds education for African girls. She is also a UNICEF Goodwill ambassador.
5. Akon — Senegalese Musician
Akon has sold millions of his three studio-recorded albums. He co-owns a record label called Kon Live that helped get Lady Gaga and T-Pain’s career started. He also owns Konvict clothing, and he founded Konfidence Foundation, which promotes education and health causes in Senegal and elsewhere in Africa.
6. Wole Soyinka — Nigerian Playwright
In 1986, Soyinka became the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Soyinka has produced “The Lion and the Jewel,” “A Dance of the Forests,” “The Strong Breed” and 17 other plays.
7. Salif Keita — Malian Musician
Keita was denied by his family because he decided to pursue his career as a musician, which was considered beneath his noble family’s status. He was banished when he was 18 years old because of the superstition that albinos were bad luck. His latest album was decimated to stop discrimination against albinos in Africa and the rest of the world.
8. Yvonne Chaka Chaka — South African Musician
Chaka Chaka is known as the “Princess of Africa.” She was known for her girly pop music. She now devotes her time to her work as a United Nations Goodwill ambassador and representative of Africa.
9. Oumou Sangare — Malian Musician
Sangare often performed music known as Wassoulou. Wassoulou is often sung by women. This music consists of lyrics having to do with women’s rights issues and feminism. Sangare is a United Nations Goodwill ambassador and was named an official ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2003.
10. Femi Kuti — Nigerian Musician
Kuti uses his music to downsize corruption, poverty and other socioeconomic issues prevalent in Nigeria and Africa through his lyrics. In his album, “Fight to Win” (which sold over 500,000 copies,) he collaborated with Common, Most Def and Jaguar Fight.
— Priscilla Rodarte
Sources: All Music, Biography, Forbes, NY Times
Photo: The Economist
Qatar’s Kafala System and Looking Ahead to FIFA 2022
Exploitation of migrant workers in Qatar has become an increasingly pressing issue since the implementation of the Kafala labor system. The Kafala system requires migrant workers to have a sponsor, usually their employee, to monitor their work and to control their visa and legal status. These sponsors, however, often prevent their laborers from moving jobs and have been known to either underpay or deny their employees pay.
Many workers from India, Sri Lanka and Nepal have been attracted by false promises from Qatari employers, but once contractually committed, they cannot leave the country without the permission of their sponsor.
Reporters from The Guardian ventured to some of these labor camps west of Doha and met 25-year-old Ujjwal Thapa from Nepal. He came to Qatar to work in order to send money back to his family, but had not been paid for months. His employer has his passport so he cannot leave, and upon his arrival, his family was required to take out a loan of 660 pounds from a private lender that has an interest rate of 48 percent per year.
Question as to whether Qatar will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup has been a topic of concern due to these human trafficking issues. In their report on human trafficking, the U.S. state department wrote that, “initial consent of a construction worker to accept hard work in a harsh environment does not waive his or her right to work free of abuse. When an employer or laborer recruiter deceives a worker about the terms of employment, withholds their passports, holds them in brutal conditions and exploits their labor, the workers are victims of trafficking.”
Eight to 12 stadiums would need to be built for the 2022 games, and although the Qatar organizing committee reported that no one had died yet building the stadiums, that is only due to the fact that the true building process has not yet begun. Between 2012 and 2013, 450 Indian laborers died and 184 Nepali workers have died in the past year.
General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, Sharan Burrow, predicts that if the Kafala system does not change, 4,000 workers will lose their lives in preparation for the 2022 world cup.
The U.S. State Department is looking to end this system by May of 2015, and in their report on human trafficking, they noted that Qatar has promised to reform these unjust labor practices. Although no serious changes have been made to improve the labor system, Burrow believes that the Qatari government will change the system if refusing to change will deny them the chance to host the World Cup in 2022.
— Jordyn Horowitz
Sources: The Guardian, BusinessWeek, New York Times
Photo: DohaNews