A FairSquare report published today has found that there is a critical absence of effective policies and processes to determine the cause of migrant worker deaths in Saudi Arabia, and concluded that the surge of construction associated with projects such as NEOM and the 2034 men’s World Cup will in all likelihood lead to thousands of unexplained deaths of low-paid foreign workers in the country.

A separate, independent investigation by Human Rights Watch, also released today, found that Saudi authorities have failed to adequately protect workers from preventable deaths, investigate workplace safety incidents, and ensure timely and adequate compensation for families. 

“Hundreds of thousands of young men, many of whom have young families, are being pitched into a labour system that poses a serious risk to their lives, a medical system that doesn’t have the capacity to determine the cause of their deaths, and a political system that doesn’t appear to either protect them or find out how they died, let alone compensate the families shattered by Saudi Arabia’s negligence,” said FairSquare co-director James Lynch.

“While FIFA praises Saudi Arabia to the rafters and highly-paid western law firms generate vast profits for curating Saudi’s reputation, children in places like Nepal grow up without their fathers and never even learn how they died.”

Underlying Causes: unexplained migrant worker deaths in Saudi Arabia is based on medical and government documentation relating to the deaths of 17 Nepali men in Saudi Arabia in 2023 and 2024 and a comprehensive examination of government data and peer-reviewed articles that address serious shortcoming in both occupational health and safety and medico-legal investigations in Saudi Arabia. The report also documents the emotional and economic impact of the deaths on the men’s families, most of whom received no meaningful information on how their loved ones died, and none of whom received any compensation from Saudi Arabia. 

“We have loans. We have taken loans from the village money lenders. We have 1 million rupees [$7250] that we took to pay for my medical bills. I don’t have to say more. I just need help.” 22-year old widow of Surya Nath

The 17 men whose deaths are investigated in the report were aged between 23 and 57 and all worked in low-paid labour-intensive sectors of the economy. Five died in workplace accidents, and 12 died from diseases or conditions. In cases of five deaths resulting from workplace accidents, families received no information to suggest that investigations had taken place, despite varying amounts of circumstantial evidence indicating that employer negligence may have been a factor. The families of 8 of the 12 men whose deaths did not result from workplace accidents had no medical documentation and no information on the specific cause of their family member’s death. 

“They are forcing me to give my small house to them if I can’t pay the money back. Three or four moneylenders are pressuring me to give them my house. Whom should I give it to? If I can’t pay it soon, I’ll be homeless.” Father of 28-year-old construction worker Arbind Kumar Sah, killed by a vehicle that struck him while he was working. His death certificate states incorrectly that he was killed in a fall.

The case of 39-year old Badri Bhujel sheds light on the serious failings in Saudi Arabia’s systems to certify deaths. Bhujel worked as a machine operator for Samsung C&T, a contractor constructing nearly 30km of tunnels for the proposed city of NEOM, in the north west of Saudi Arabia. According to a hospital-issued death certificate seen by FairSquare, the cause of Bhujel’s death on 11 April 2024 was “alveolar and parietoalveolar conditions”, and it also notes that Bhujel had been diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis two days prior to his death. This diagnosis is consistent with accounts given by Bhujel’s colleagues, who told FairSquare that five days before his death Bhujel suddenly vomited large amounts of blood while at work and was taken to hospital by ambulance. However, the death certificate issued by the Ministry of Interior states only that Bhujel died from a “natural death” and includes none of the information reported by the doctors who treated Bhujel.

According to peer-reviewed medical research, “respiratory diseases are frequent in tunnel workers” and result from “a variety of exposures, including total and silica dust, diesel exhaust fumes and nitrogen dioxide.” FairSquare wrote to Samsung C&T on 20 March 2025 to inquire if they had initiated any investigation into the circumstances of Badri Bhujel’s death, but at the time of publication they have not responded.

The report found numerous structural and systemic problems in the manner in which Saudi Arabia’s medico-legal system investigates deaths and almost complete lack of transparency over the numbers and causes of non-Saudi deaths:

• Saudi Arabia’s government ministries provide no information that allows for meaningful analysis of the numbers and circumstances of deaths.

• Death certification documents issued by the Ministry of Interior in cases of deaths of non-Saudi Arabian nationals often do not reflect information contained on medical death certificates and appear to state the cause of death in all non-violent deaths as “natural death”. 

• A 2019 study by a Saudi pathologist examined all death certificates from a Riyadh hospital between 1997 and 2016 and found that in 100% of cases the cause of death was “either incorrect or absent” and that in 75% of cases there was no cause of death at all.

• A 2022 peer-reviewed academic paper by five physicians from King Saud University, described how ”the medical environment [in Saudi Arabia] is generally opposed to autopsy” and found that “there is no system for medical autopsies and no training program that trains pathologists to do medical autopsy.”

“It’s very difficult for me now. We don’t have a person to earn money now. How can I feed my children? They all are small” Widow of Sitaram Das, who left behind five children all under 15.

In a separate investigation published last month the research organisation Migrant-Rights.org raised concerns about possible unethical harvesting of organs of Kenyan migrants who returned home from Saudi Arabia dead, with their cause of death classified as “natural”. 

FairSquare is calling on the Saudi Arabian authorities to overhaul their systems for the investigation and certification of deaths, and take urgent steps to address the serious and systemic health risks migrant workers are facing in the country’s construction industry: commissioning independent investigations into the causes of migrant workers’ deaths; carrying out autopsies in the case of sudden and unexplained deaths of migrant workers; and improving the quality of available data on mortality statistics for migrants.

FairSquare wrote to the Saudi Arabian authorities and FIFA inviting them to comment on these findings, but has to date received no response.

Vision 2030 and FIFA men’s 2034 World Cup

Saudi Arabia’s migrant worker workforce grew by 40%, to 13.2 million, in the five years up to 2024, in the context of a plethora of “giga-projects”, such as the futuristic tech city NEOM. Many hundreds of thousands more foreign workers will be required to build the stadiums and infrastructure for the 2034 FIFA men’s World Cup, which will involve at the very least eight new stadiums, 73 new training facilities with associated accommodation, an increase in Saudi Arabia’s hotel capacity of nearly 500%, and a series of huge transport infrastructure projects. 

In the process of awarding the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia, FIFA’s human rights policies were once again exposed as a sham, most notably in the commissioning of an “independent” human rights context assessment by a branch of the global law firm Clifford Chance, that took no account of credible reporting on risks to migrant workers, and consulted no workers or human rights experts.

In December 2024 FIFA agreed a major sponsorship deal with Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company that accounted for 4.38% of global CO2 emissions in 2023. Aramco’s CEO said last year that “we should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas and instead invest in them”. Migrant construction workers in Saudi Arabia have minimal protection from the country’s brutal heat and humidity, which is experiencing drastic increases as a result of climate breakdown. FIFA’s sponsorship deal promoting one of the world’s biggest polluters will put the workers who will prepare the infrastructure for its flagship tournament at even greater risk.