World Cup Stadium an island in a sea of misery and abuse

Chants and songs of football fans will ring out later this year during the World Cup in Qatar, but behind the closed doors of villas and apartments, the cries, screams, and sobbing of domestic workers will remain muffled.

Abuse of maids and domestic servants in Qatar is so common that it would be a challenge to find a worker who has not been sexually assaulted, beaten, spat on, threatened, verbally abused, or forced to work well beyond their contractual obligations.

Recent investigations found that just under half of 105 migrant female domestic servants who were interviewed reported being physically assaulted by their Qatari employers. If we extrapolate these figures, that means that on any given day in Doha, roughly 70,000 women are attacked in the homes where they work.