Culture
FIFA report: Saudi 2034 World Cup bid has ‘medium’ human rights risk
FIFA, the world governing body for football, released on Friday night its evaluation report for Saudi Arabia’s bid to host the men’s World Cup in 2034, awarding the nation a higher score for bidding requirements than it granted the successful Canadian, American and Mexican joint bid for the 2026 edition, while declaring the risk assessment for human rights to be “medium”.
FIFA also claim in their report that there is “good potential” for the competition to act as a “catalyst” for reforms within Saudi Arabia, saying it will “contribute to positive human rights outcomes”. Amnesty International described FIFA’s observations as “an astonishing whitewash” of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.
The bid report also declared the bid by oil-rich Saudi to have demonstrated a “good commitment to sustainability” while FIFA acknowledges that the Saudi bid presents an “elevated risk” in terms of timing due to the climate of the country.
FIFA, which ordinarily holds men’s World Cups in June and July, says the bidder did not stipulate a proposed window for the tournament but pledged to collaborate to “ensure the tournament’s success”, implying we may see a repeat of the 2022 edition in Qatar which was shifted to the winter months to allow for the safety of participants and supporters.
FIFA ranks its World Cup bids out of five and awarded the Saudi bid a score of 4.2, higher than the so-called United bid for 2026, which was rated 4.0. For the Women’s World Cup in 2027, Brazil’s successful bid was ranked 4.0, while the defeated joint bid of Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany was given a score of 3.7.
FIFA released its report in an email to media at 12.33am Central European Time on Saturday morning. Almost immediately, reports emerged in Middle Eastern English-speaking outlets such as the Saudi Gazette, declaring that the Saudi bid had received the highest ever score from FIFA when bidding for a World Cup.
The Saudi bid for the 2034 World Cup had already been considered a nigh-on inevitability because it was the only bidder for the tournament. This outcome developed after FIFA announced a mega-edition bid for the 2030 World Cup, which would be hosted across three continents (Africa, Europe and South America) and six countries (Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay).
This ruled those three continents out of bidding for the following World Cup in 2034, while the joint U.S., Canada and Mexico event for 2026 ruled out a return to North America due to FIFA’s principle of confederation rotation.
This left the Saudis with a clear run in the absence of a rival from elsewhere in Asia or Oceania, subject to a vote of member nations at the FIFA Congress on December 11, which was widely seen as a formality.
FIFA’s report say their evaluation “consulted various sources, including the bidder’s human rights strategy, the mandated context assessment, as well as direct commitments from the host country and host cities, together with all contractual hosting documents, all of which notably contain provisions relating to respecting human rights in connection with the competition”.
Tennis stars Ons Jabeur (far left) and Aryna Sabalenka tour the Saudi 2034 bid exhibition in October (Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images for WTA)
However, The Athletic revealed last month how 11 organisations — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, a Saudi Arabian diaspora organisation and human rights groups specialising in the Gulf region — raised major concerns about the credibility of a report for FIFA entitled “Independent Context Assessment Prepared for the Saudi Arabian Football Federation in relation to the FIFA World Cup 2034”.
The independent context assessment, produced by the Saudi arm of global law firm Clifford Chance, excluded a large number of internationally recognised human rights from its assessment, saying this was because “either Saudi Arabia has not ratified the relevant treaties or because the Saudi Football Federation did not recognise them as ‘applying’ to the assessment”.
This meant it avoided delving into matters many would consider pertinent to Saudi, notably relating to freedom of expression, association and assembly, as well as LGBTQI+ discrimination, the prohibition of trade unions, the right to freedom of religion and forced evictions.
The report said that the scope of its assessment was “determined by the Saudi Arabian Football Federation in agreement with FIFA”, suggesting that FIFA itself approved the omissions. Both the Saudi Football Association and FIFA did not respond when approached by The Athletic at the time.
In a press release by the rights groups, they claimed that “Saudi Arabia’s already dire human rights record has deteriorated under the de facto rule of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman” and cited a “soaring number of mass executions, torture, enforced disappearance, severe restrictions on free expression, repression of women’s rights under the male guardianship system, LGBTI+ discrimination, and the killing of hundreds of migrants at the Saudi Arabia-Yemen border”.
“As expected, FIFA’s evaluation of Saudi Arabia’s World Cup bid is an astonishing whitewash of the country’s atrocious human rights record,” added Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International’s head of labour rights and sport. “There are no meaningful commitments that will prevent workers from being exploited, residents from being evicted or activists from being arrested.
“By ignoring the clear evidence of severe human rights risks, FIFA is likely to bear much responsibility for the violations and abuses that will take place over the coming decade. Fundamental human rights reforms are urgently required in Saudi Arabia, or the 2034 World Cup will be inevitably tarnished by exploitation, discrimination and repression.”
The FIFA bid evaluation, published on Saturday morning, leans heavily on the Clifford Chance report. It does not make any references to the terms “LGBTQI+”, “sexuality” or “sexual orientation”, while the only mention of women’s rights within Saudi Arabia can be found with references to the growth of the women’s game and women’s participation in football within Saudi.
The bid evaluation says that Saudi “has made significant strides in developing interest and grassroots participation for women and girls, and at the elite level”.
A model of Jeddah Central Development at the Saudi 2034 World Cup exhibition in Riyadh (Fayez Nureldine/AFP via Getty Images)
The bid, which ranks by low, medium or high, also gives a medium level of risk to stadiums, transport and accommodation, as well as the previously explained “event timing”. Stadiums are awarded a 4.1 rating out of five, despite eight of the proposed 15 stadiums for the tournament being new-builds. FIFA said this presented a “slightly elevated” risk profile.
The bid evaluation says the Saudi bid submitted commitments from the government to “respect, protect and fulfil internationally recognised human rights in connection with the competition, including in the areas of safety and security, labour rights (in particular fundamental labour rights and those of migrant workers), rights of children, gender equality and non-discrimination, as well as freedom of expression (including press freedom)”.
FIFA says the Saudis have committed to “equitable wages”, as well as “decent working and living conditions for all individuals involved in the preparation and delivery of the FIFA World Cup, including through the establishment of a workers’ welfare system to monitor compliance with labour rights standards for tournament-related workers”.
They also say the Saudis will “engage with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in relation to its commitment to upholding international labour standards in all activities associated with the competition.” The treatment and rights of migrant workers were among the biggest talking points before and during the 2022 World Cup, staged in neighbouring Qatar.
GO DEEPER
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FIFA simultaneously released its report for the sole bid for the 2030 World Cup, which will be held in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay. The 2030 bid, which does not have a rival, will also be voted on by the member nations on December 11. It also received a rating of 4.2 out of 5, with the only medium risk factors judged to be stadiums, accommodation, transport, and the legal framework of the tournament.
The “sustainable event management” and “environmental protection” of a competition held across three continents was judged to be a “low” risk.
The report says that the “environmental impact assessment and initial carbon footprint assessment by the bidder, together with the commitments, objectives and mitigation actions outlined, provide a good foundation for the development of effective strategies towards managing the negative impacts of the tournament on the planet and protecting the environment”.
(Top photo: Christopher Pike/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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