The Report Qatar 2014

2013 saw the transition of power from the former Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, to Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, his fourth son and second son with Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, a move unprecedented elsewhere in the Gulf but not unexpected in Qatar. With sustained, long-term economic growth, the highest per capita income in the world, a stable and well-capitalised banking sector, a sovereign wealth fund that is of true global significance and one of the largest reserves of natural gas just offshore, Qatar today has many advantages. It is clear that the country is in a strong position from which to continue its robust economic performance, and the years ahead will see a vast construction drive, in line with the principles of Qatar National Vision 2030 and catalysed by preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Oil and gas accounted for around 51.5% of Qatar’s economic output in 2013, while developing downstream facilities that add value to energy by-products, for example, has helped build a portfolio of petrochemicals, chemicals and fertiliser companies and looks set to see Qatar’s economic strength continue. With more than $222bn of projects in the pipeline, the construction sector’s growth has been forecast at 15% for 2014, while spending on infrastructure is set to reach $150bn in the run-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Against this backdrop, Qatar looks set to continue offering a wide variety of opportunities for foreign investors.

Qatar’s sizable oil and natural gas reserves have underpinned its rapid economic growth over the past two decades. Home to the world’s largest non-associated gas field, the country is the world’s fourth-largest producer of dry natural gas and the largest producer of liquefied natural gas, with hydrocarbons revenues forming the bulk of national income as a result. Although the drop in global energy prices has impacted export revenues, rigorous economic diversification drives in recent years have paid dividends, and in 2015 non-hydrocarbons growth reached 7.7%, compared to a 0.1% contraction for hydrocarbons growth during the same period. The country’s financial sector has continued to evolve; Islamic banking in particular has witnessed significant progress. Meanwhile, as the country gears up to host several important sporting events in the coming years, most notably the 2022 FIFA World Cup, numerous big-ticket infrastructure builds continue to expand the construction sector.

Qatar's sizeable oil and natural gas reserves have underpinned its rapid economic growth over the past two decades. Home to the world's largest non-associated gas field, the country is the world's fourth-largest producer of dry natural gas and the largest producer of liquefied natural gas, with hydrocarbons revenues forming the bulk of national income as a result. Although the drop in global energy prices has impacted export revenues, rigorous economic diversification drives in recent years have paid dividends, and in 2015 non-hydrocarbons growth reached 7.7%, compared to a 0.1% contraction for hydrocarbons growth during the same period. The country's financial sector has continued to evolve; Islamic banking in particular has witnessed significant progress. Meanwhile,

"In December 2010, the small Gulf state of Qatar won its bid to host the 2022 World Cup--a first for an Arab country. Over the next decade the country will undertake massive new construction to support the quadrennial world championship soccer games. Underpinning this push is a vast army of migrant workers, who comprise a staggering 94 percent of Qatar's workforce--1.2 million of its 1.7 million residents--the highest percentage of migrants to citizens in the world. Qatar's World Cup selection means that worker recruitment will reach new heights: media have reported that over a million additional workers may be needed to carry out World Cup-related construction. Yet the deeply problematic working conditions of migrant workers throughout the country mean that realizing Qatar's World Cup vision may depend on their abuse and exploitation unless adequate measures are taken to address the human rights problems widespread in the construction industry in Qatar. This report documents pervasive employer exploitation and abuse of workers in Qatar's construction industry, made possible by an inadequate legal and regulatory framework that grants employers extensive control over workers and prohibits migrant workers from exercising their rights to free association and collective bargaining. It also addresses the government's failure to enforce those laws that at least on paper are designed to protect worker rights. It examines why violations of workers' rights go largely undetected, and looks at the barriers that workers face in reporting complaints or seeking redress. The report includes recommendations to the government on legal reforms and implementation mechanisms, and to the relevant private sector actors on public commitments that could alleviate such abuses moving forward."--P. [4] of cover.

Qatar and the Arab Spring offers a frank examination of Qatar's startling rise to regional and international prominence, describing how its distinctive policy stance toward the Arab Spring emerged. In only a decade, Qatari policy-makers - led by the Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, and his prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani - catapulted Qatar from a sleepy backwater to a regional power with truly international reach. In addition to pursuing an aggressive state-branding strategy with its successful bid for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Qatar forged a reputation for diplomatic mediation that combined intensely personalized engagement with financial backing and favorable media coverage through the Al-Jazeera. These factors converged in early 2011 with the outbreak of the Arab Spring revolts in North Africa, Syria, and Yemen, which Qatari leaders saw as an opportunity to seal their regional and international influence, rather than as a challenge to their authority, and this guided their support of the rebellions against the Gaddafi and Assad regimes in Libya and Syria. From the high watermark of Qatari influence after the toppling of Gaddafi in 2011, that rapidly gave way to policy overreach in Syria in 2012, Coates Ulrichsen analyses Qatari ambition and capabilities as the tiny emirate sought to shape the transitions in the Arab world.

This book offers an in‐depth analysis of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The first World Cup to be held in the Middle East, this was a unique sporting mega‐event, and this book explores its wider significance across political, socio‐cultural, economic, organisational and historical dimensions. Featuring the work of an international team of researchers, this book includes local and regional perspectives on the Qatar World Cup as well as views from beyond the Middle East. It covers the development phase, including the bidding process, as well as the tournament itself, exploring key contemporary issues in sport and event studies such as sports diplomacy and the geopolitics of sport, post‐colonial narratives, event legacies and community development, media framing, inclusive access, sport policy and governance, and mega‐events and human rights. Making sense of the world’s biggest sports event in an era in which sport has become a source of soft power for states around the world, this book is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the politics of sport, sport business and management, sport for development, event studies or the relationships between sport and wider society.

This is the first book to examine challenges in the healthcare sector in the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain). These countries experienced remarkably swift transformations from small fishing and pearling communities at the beginning of the twentieth century to wealthy petro-states today. Their healthcare systems, however, are only now beginning to catch up. Rapid changes to the population and lifestyles of the GCC states have completely changed—and challenged—the region’s health profile and infrastructure. While major successes in combatting infectious diseases and improving standards of primary healthcare are reflected in key health indicators, new trends have developed; increasingly “lifestyle” or “wealthy country” diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, have replaced the old maladies. To meet these emerging healthcare needs, GCC states require highly trained and skilled healthcare workers, an environment that supports local training, state-of-the-art diagnostic laboratories and hospitals, research production and dissemination, and knowledge acquisition. They face shortages in most if not all of these areas. This book provides a comprehensive study of the rapidly changing health profile of the region, the existing conditions of healthcare systems, and the challenges posed to healthcare management across the six states of the GCC.

This book investigates the political implications of country promotion through practices of ‘nation-branding’ by drawing on contemporary examples from the sports, urban development and higher education sector in Kazakhstan and Qatar. Nation-branding has emerged as a central practice of international politics, where it is commonly understood as a vain, superficial selling technique with little political salience. Drawing on shared insights from practice theory and constructivist notions of nationalism, identity and power, this book challenges this reading and instead argues that nation-branding is neither neutral nor primarily economically motivated, but inherently politicised and tied to the legitimation of current political regimes. The starting point for the analysis is a range of everyday practices and sites long ignored by international relations scholars. In particular, the book traces how the political leadership in Kazakhstan and Qatar have used participation in the international sports circuit, spectacular urban development, and the construction of ‘world-class’ universities to first produce and then stabilize new ideas about their state. Providing a new analytical perspective on nation-branding, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Middle Eastern and Central Asian studies, International Relations, and Cultural and Political Geography.

The book offers a critical evaluation of Qatar’s path from oil- and gas-based industries to a knowledge-based economy. This book gives basic information about the region and the country, including the geographic and demographic data, the culture, the politics and the economy, the health care conditions and the education system. It introduces the concepts of knowledge society and knowledge-based development and adds factual details about Qatar by interpreting indicators of the development status. Subsequently, the research methods that underlie the study are described, which offers information on the eGovernment study analyzing the government-citizen relationship, higher education institutions and systems, its students and the students’ way into the labor market. This book has an audience with economists, sociologists, political scientists, geographers, information scientists and other researchers on the knowledge society, but also all researchers and practitioners interested in the Arab Oil States and their future.