A chart published by the Washington Post late May showed the extent of the problem for migrant labor workers in Qatar — the deaths so far are already incomparable to the previous World Cups.
But Qatar has denied any deaths in the World Cup construction, bringing skepticism to the number reported by the International Trade Union Confederation.
The BBC took a closer look at the 1,200 number. Here are two key flaws.
The ITUC's statistic:
1. did not include all migrant workers. These are deaths reported by Indian and Nepali embassies. Only 60 percent of migrant workers come from India and Nepal, so by this account, 1,200 may be a conservative estimate.
2. used all construction deaths, not just from the facilities. It's true that the World Cup is creating an infrastructure overhaul, affecting all aspects of rebuilding from transportation to entire new cities. But construction would have continued regardless of the World Cup.
The question of whether these deaths are from World Cup construction, or technically just construction, becomes kind of irrelevant.
Granted, the ITUC's methods aren't perfect. Yet the human rights group dedicated to protecting workers' rights is probably more trustworthy than Qatar, a government so nervous about reporting workers' conditions it's detained journalists to protect those secrets.
