Campaigns: Call on Barcelona Football Club to Drop Qatar Airways as a Sponsor

Many thanks to Abdesalam Ouaddou SumOfUs member and former Qatar Stars League football player

I am a football player from Morocco. While working in Qatar, my employer ended my contract without any valid reason and stopped paying me. I was then prevented from leaving the country. However, this abuse is little compared to abuses that I saw many foreign workers take while I was in Qatar, namely those building the World Cup stadium.

Qatar Airways is one of the employers in the country who engages in systematic worker abuses: the largely foreign-born cabin crew are exploited, required to get company permission to marry, forcibly confined on company premises, and automatically sacked if they become pregnant.

Eventually I was able to leave Qatar, but the migrant women who work for Qatar Airways don’t have that same luck. When I heard about SumOfUs’ new Community Platform, I knew I had to speak up for the women who cannot escape their employment situation.

There is a way to help them — the airline sponsors one of the biggest football clubs out there, the Barcelona Football Club. It’s the club’s election season right now and whether or not to drop the club is a major point of contention. If we come together now, we could get Barcelona FC to drop Qatar Airways as a sponsor over its mistreatment of workers.

Sign my petition asking the Barcelona Football Club to drop Qatar Airways as a sponsor.

Qatar’s national employment system, kafala, is cruel and brutal. Employers are allowed to prevent foreign workers from leaving the country, even if they fail to pay wages or mistreat workers. The Qatar Airways CEO exploits this system for his own profit — even saying publicly that he “doesn’t give a damn” about workers rights.

Barcelona’s millions of fans see the team as “more than a club”, revered not only for the quality of its players — like Neymar, Andrés Iniesta and of course, Lionel Messi — but for its allegiance to ethics, fairness and social justice. Barcelona’s main sponsor was once the international children’s charity, UNICEF — a perfectly wonderful sponsor for the team and one that some candidates in the election would like to return to.

My message to the sporting world, Barcelona and FIFA: we cannot legitimize a company that exploits thousands of vulnerable workers. It is against the values of the sport. The Barcelona Football Club needs to drop Qatar Airways as a sponsor.

Join me asking the Barcelona Football Club to take action against Qatar Airways’ working conditions now!