STOCKHOLM: The Swedish Football Association is now putting pressure on Fifa to press for more changes. “Fifa must take the necessary steps”, write Håkan Sjöstrand and Karl-Erik Nilsson in an open letter to President Gianni Infantino. In connection with the latest national team gathering, the human rights organization Amnesty issued a call to unions and supporters: Increase the pressure on Fifa to bring about a change for the many migrant workers who work in Qatar under miserable conditions around the World Cup 2022. Among other things, Amnesty wanted to see the national federations take a more “active role” in the advocacy work against Fifa and they also encouraged supporters to sign a petition. The Swedish Football Association has been criticized for not doing enough in the issue of the Qatar World Cup. As many national teams during the last gathering carried out various forms of protest actions, SvFF has constantly repeated that they tried and try to bring about change through dialogue, which also players and leaders supported and the national team therefore did not make a visible protest during any of the matches. – From our side, the union has had a policy for five years to have a dialogue, to highlight. This is something we are all behind, said Sebastian Larsson, when the question came up during the national team gathering. Now the association chooses to go directly to the highest place in Fifa to show again where they stand on the issue. SvFF’s two highest-ranking people, chairman Karl-Erik Nilsson and general secretary Håkan Sjöstrand, have now published an open letter to Fifa president Gianni Infantino. The letter calls on Fifa to “increase the pressure” on Qatar. Among other things, the duo writes that they think Fifa should “use all its influence, publicly and internally, to call on Qatar to fully implement and implement its labor reforms and take further measures to protect workers”. Furthermore, it can be read that Nilsson and Sjöstrand think that Fifa “must take all necessary steps” for human rights to be met in future World Cups and that the World Cup in future will not be played in countries that do not comply with human rights. “It is time for Fifa to take immediate and concrete action,” the letter said. Since Qatar got the World Cup finals, SvFF has, among other things, been on site on three occasions in the country, together with the Nordic countries, to try to influence Qatar and to bring about a change.

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